About

A global operation with 7,400 dealer locations globally, Cummins creates, distributes and supports an impressive array of diesel and alternative engines for civilian and defence clients at land and sea. A company with over 50,000 employees and a large presence in Brazil, the legal team based in the country is responsible for the whole of the Latin America region for the business. Patricia Ulian, formerly legal manager for agricultural company Syngenta, has been employed by the company since the end of 2010 and is the current legal director for Cummins Latin America. This is a particularly demanding brief given the variety of economic, political and cultural differences that span each jurisdiction on the continent, and the fact that Ulian and the rest of the Cummins legal team in Brazil is able to deal with this speaks volumes as to its flexibility. Ulian explains the context of the team’s operation within the company as being ‘involved in all corporate transactions, not only to give technical support, but to participate with a strategic perspective, anticipating risks and results’. Alongside Ulian, the legal team containing nine lawyers and six non-lawyers in total work in a way that she states involves ‘cooperation and caring about each other [as] teamwork brings more personal satisfaction, motivation and better results’. These results include the establishment of a ‘strong global compliance function’, and the development of tools which ‘drastically enhanced’ employee compliance awareness. Ulian explains how training sessions ‘simulating real day-by-day situations, especially approaching legislation grey areas’ were utilised, as was the development of KPI’s to spread an understanding of its efficiency. The current scope of the legal team is in contrast to the simple back office function it provided approximately seven years ago. Since then, Ulian states: ‘Year-by-year the team built a strong partnership with business leaders and legal became a key area in the company, supporting the main strategic decisions. In the last two years, the transformation was even deeper, the legal function that used to be an “advisor” achieved the status of “influencer”, which means that the whole team became a trendsetter of the company, helping leaders to draw new strategies and actively participating in the company’s decision making process.’