About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department?

The legal team is structured by sub-region, then country and most relevant business markets for Essilor. Key individuals are the legal managers responsible for the most relevant countries and sub-regions: Brazil – Ricardo Pontes; Government Relations Brazil – Moacir Cavalcanti; ELAC and Colombia – Anamaria Cendales; Mexico – Cesar Rivera; Latin American Compliance – Fabiana Copello.

What geographical area does the team cover and what challenges has it faced when covering multiple jurisdictions in the region?

The team covers the whole Latin America region, with subsidiaries of Essilor in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, the US, Mexico and a presence as a supplier of lenses and optical sector solutions and machinery to over 23 countries. Challenges vary from unstable economies to corruption, other compliance associated risks and changes to management. For the team this means we have to be focused on the key risks of each country and build solid relationships with each local manager or representative to ensure the highest ethical and compliance standards are followed and applied.

How important have “soft skills” or personal attributes outside of technical legal skill been to the team’s success, and which “soft skills” do you feel are most important for an in-house lawyer to possess?

I believe it is fundamental. At Essilor we truly think of ourselves not as pure “technical resources” but as “business partners” and “enablers”, within such role we must have the required soft skills and most importantly each of us (regardless of the position within our team) has to hold the ownership of its actions as leaders inside and outside of the organisation.

Our team soft skills that we mostly value and embrace day to day are having great communication between us, knowing what we are doing so that we can promote the collaborative work approach and each add value to each other’s work streams. I as the head of the team ensure each of the legal managers and their subordinate lawyers and paralegals are empowered and have the right tools to be “free to succeed”, knowing when they need help and what success looks like, we have to make important decisions in our daily tasks that are crucial for the long term sustainable growth of the company, those decisions need to be taken considering the risks involved and protection of the reputation of the company, ensuring that its principles and values are always in the centre of all we do every day.

Emotional stability is also essential – as leaders and people others look up to inside the organisation we/lawyers need to understand what we need to achieve and how best to do it in a positive way, so that we are happy and make others happy around us, understanding what the business needs and what our colleagues need from us. Finally, we also truly value the authenticity of each member and how such an ambiance of diversity can help us be better, achieve better results and develop each other more day-to-day.

Focus on…

Diversity

We know that companies in the top quartile for gender, racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. At Essilor, the French multinational leader of the ophthalmic lenses industry globally, that has recently combined with Luxottica, a leading Italian company in the frames industry, we believe in a diversity that truly creates value, amongst our 80,000 employees. Diversity of talents, cultures and ideas is one of our greatest strengths. By developing these conditions and skills and promoting inclusion we successfully and sustainably grew our business and achieved our mission of improving lives by improving sight. Essilor supports the W.I.L. (Women In Leadership) initiative in its Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions to help develop more women into leadership positions. In Latin America we are initiating a women’s network to enable similar initiatives to take place in the region.

Essilor, along with other major industrial companies, is part of the EVE programme created to foster female leadership. In 2013, Essilor, established its inclusive business 2.5 New Vision Generation (2.5 NVG), to create awareness, develop infrastructure and bring affordable eye care to low income countries which count for 90% of the 2.5 bn people who suffer from uncorrected poor vision globally. Essilor’s inclusive business programmes impact seven out of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. These include no poverty, quality educations, gender equality and decent work and economic growth. As part of 2.5 NVG, Essilor Brazil has created “Vision Ambassadors”, an initiative that is aimed at women, mostly, to promote the good vision in their communities.

Our code of conduct contains important guidelines on what we expect from our employees, including respect for human rights. The primary focus of our attention is to protect and correct the sight of everyone on the planet, whatever their age, culture and living conditions. In order to achieve this we count on us our diverse talents that work together respecting each other, we encourage initiatives to boost employees diversity by providing equal opportunities and dynamic career management for all employees on the merit of skills, personal suitability and experience, rather than on subjective evaluations mechanisms.

In the region we have promoted several training sessions on ethical behaviour, explaining what trigger situations of both moral and sexual harassment, as well examples of how each of us need to act based on our high moral standards – rewarding after such training sessions behaviours that are clearly in line with the Essilor Principles and Values.

We strictly respect international labour laws which allow us to set standards and obey rules that are more stringent and with higher integrity rights and values, regional and local laws enabling easy adaptation and mobility of our talents.

We all know why diversity and inclusion matters. As we are live in a globalised and connected world, these conditions enable companies to attract and recruit best talents, to be more consumer/customer oriented, to increase their internal employees’ satisfaction and performance, as well as improve their empowerment and decision making processes.