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?

Together with a team member we had the idea to build a legal portal, a virtual place where the business can make requests to the legal department, as opposed to e-mail requests, and attach documentation. This portal was designed from scratch, tailormade for the company and the team, we thought about the business needs and how both the legal team´s work and the sales team requests could be more efficient and easier. By coming up with this useful tool we achieved standardization of the information provided by the business, a service level agreement, centralisation of all the concepts, agreements and advice given by legal and metrics of the work done by legal. This portal has been improved and upgraded by the Legal Innovation Team and continues to add value to the business and to the legal team.

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years?

I consider that the words that we should highlight to answer this question are innovation and technology. I think general counsels should always be looking to learn and implement new ways to provide legal services and match the needs of constantly evolving businesses. A key development to the way us in legal work is artificial intelligence, currently we are starting to use it and I foresee that in the future artificial intelligence will be an important way on how we provide support, solutions, advice and training. For example, in the future many legal departments will have a chatbot in order to answer less complex legal questions and I´m sure the tool will continue to grow, get better and be able to manage more intricate matters.

How do you prioritise diversity and inclusion within your legal department, and what initiatives have you implemented to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment?

I believe that by having different points of view, people with different backgrounds, education, preferences in the conversation you can achieve better results and get further. Diversity and inclusion are crucial to foster belonging and by making everyone feel included we can have a good work environment. I prioritize diversity and inclusion by considering new ideas, encouraging my team to feel empowered to share their ideas and feelings and give them support for them to have time to support the diversity and inclusion initiatives they feel passionate about. Within Medtronic I work in different diversity and inclusion groups, I´m co-chair of the Pride Colombia group and I´m part of the leadership team of the “better call us diversity” project in the legal department. With these 2 groups we have implemented many important initiatives that have had a positive effect, but I would highlight the talk show “Loud & Proud” we created with Pride Colombia, this is a space to speak about different topics that impact the LGBTIQ+ community, to raise awareness and educate.