Colombia Teams 2019
| Coca-Cola FEMSA
Coca-Cola FEMSA
Silvia Barrero, legal and corporate affairs vice president, leads an eight-lawyer in-house legal team for Coca-Cola FEMSA in Colombia. She leads the legal team drawing on more than 15 years of experience in the company, managing the legal, corporate affairs, corporate communication and sustainability areas. Reporting to her is labour lawyer Carlos Martínez who has been working in Coca-Cola FEMSA since 2011, and is currently chief for judicial matters with a team of four executives in charge of labour, administrative, permits and licenses and property law, managing more than 800 processes. Legal senior executive Juan David Ovalle is in charge of corporate, commercial, foreign exchange, customs law regarding free trade zone, financial, sanitary law and prejudicial claims with a team of two lawyers. The legal team has a horizontal organisational structure, with less supervision levels and a team that is specialised and focused on specific branches of law. Additionally, since 2019 it is returning to a regional structure in the cities of Medellín and Barranquilla in order to guarantee permits and licenses compliance and gain more representativeness in the local operations. Barrero highlights that, ‘legal areas should have the ability to promote a legal culture in the organisation with a friendly environment with the internal client and have to be seen as allies to reach corporate and business goals’.
