About

Alejandra Urenda Silva joined Electrolux in 2014 as legal manager for the Southern Cone, covering Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia before being promoted and also assuming responsibility for the Andean countries. Her latest promotion in 2019 has seen her add to her remit and she now also covers North Latin America and the Caribbean region for the Swedish global leader in home appliances. As the company’s first in-house lawyers in Latin America outside of Brazil, Urenda describes the initial tasks she faced: ‘One of the main changes that I had to make was to modernise the local legal counsel approach, shifting from reactive and external legal advice to the establishment of an internal legal department with a deep knowledge of the business, involvement in decision-making, taking preventive control actions of business-related risks and acting more like a business partner than a traditional lawyer, but always remaining objective and independent’. Having achieved this, today she can proudly say that ‘the in-house lawyers’ role is highly valued, not only for its support in legal matters but also because of its contribution to the company’s performance. We have contributed to a company culture transformation’. Over the course of her four years at Electrolux, Urenda has been involved in a wide range of matters including a major ongoing company project in China as well as planning and implementing a very innovative stock purchase offer for minority shareholders of some of the group’s companies in Chile. Explaining the latter, she shares the following: ‘The task involved working under a complex scenario, with a highly atomised minority interest both in terms of shareholders and shares. There is a large group of passive shareholders, to whom it is very difficult to contact, and whose interest and incentive to sell would be very low in other circumstances. Not only the planning, but also the execution of this project, have challenged our creativity every day. It has been much harder than expected. Even though the projects is still under development so its results are uncertain, it has been an excellent experience’. Before joining Electrolux, Urenda spent almost five years at Empresas Andrómaco, a local pharmaceutical company with businesses all over Latin America, where she developed skills such as strategic thinking, compliance, teamwork and effective communication skills, among others. Highlighting commitment, business orientation and strategic thinking as three principles that have guided her career, Urenda adds that, ‘in my opinion, these aspects are very relevant differentiating factors between a good professional and an excellent one, even for lawyers, and particularly in the in-house career’.