Team size: 25

Major legal advisers: Baker McKenzie, Posse Herrera Ruiz, Gómez-Pinzón, CMS Rodriguez-Azuero, Lloreda Camacho & Co., Brigard & Urrutia, ECIJA

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Through a modest investment and the internal efforts of various company departments, in 2020 we began transformation of our legal department, which has positioned us at the forefront of in-house legal services. This project began as a personal initiative but evolved to a team empowering and thriving collaboration that forever changed the way we work. Lawyers can definitely be innovative!

We implemented legal-design contracts that helped us reduce the extension of our contracts in Colombia, Chile, and Mexico with simple and clear language, and made it easier for non-lawyer contractual managers or operators to understand the scope of their obligations. This has helped us build trusted relationships with clients and suppliers working from an empathetic focus.

We built a legal services hub that puts our knowledge at the service of the firm and makes it accessible to all company employees. This enables them to self-manage in an agile and efficient manner.

We implemented a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system and constructed a legal services hub for all our collaborators.

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

As one of the three growth levers of Alianza Team, and an essential component of the organisation’s corporate strategy, we understand sustainability as the integral and strategic management of opportunities and risks that will allow us to meet our objectives in the short, medium and long term, fulfilling the expectations and needs of our stakeholders to manage our externalities and leave a positive footprint in all the places where we are present. In 2021 we declared our 2030 vision for a more inclusive, prosperous, hopeful, and sustainable future. This vision impacts our people, communities, value chain, and the planet. Our corporate commitment embed in the core of our manufacturing and supply operations is reflected in our ranking in the 2022 Sustainability Corporate Assessment (CSA) conducted by S&P Global. In the global food industry, we rank 21st, while in in Mexico we hold the first position, in Colombia and Chile, we rank third. In the United States, we rank sixth.

What is a cause, business-related or otherwise, you are passionate about, and why?

As the leader of a diverse team of 17 women and eight men of four nationalities and various areas of expertise, I am passionate about being a driving force for people to shine. I believe this also helps purpose-oriented organisations, like Alianza Team, to achieve their goals while having a positive impact on all our stakeholders. I am a believer of humanising organisations because this is the most genuine and sustainable way to perform in the market. Working on issues that involve high levels of technical knowledge, I seek to promote empathy so that the team can better understand and address the needs of our internal clients and stakeholders. To this end, I constantly promote the use of simple and clear language that allows our stakeholders to understand the motives and scope of our recommendations. Our work is not only for lawyers; our work is for clients – internal and external – that do not necessarily understand legal terms, and in order for our work to have impact and value, to be a basis for transparent, clear, and trust-based relationships, we should keep it simple.