Team size: Nine

Can you please tell us a bit about yourself and your role?

Since November 2022, I have been counsel and senior manager at Mondelēz Snacking Mexico. I am responsible for legal support for the supply chain, regulatory affairs, government relations and manufacturing operations in Mexico.

The legal team at Mondelēz has been recently revamped due to the acquisition of Ricolino — a major candy company in Mexico, which doubled the company’s size and added USD$ 171m net income per year. The current operation of the Mexican Business Unit includes seven manufacturing sites, which I legally oversee. I have worked on a legal compliance project to assess and ensure business continuity and the timely execution of expansion projects on all our sites. In this regard, I have identified permits, authorisations and notifications before federal, state, or local authorities that must be in place and their actual status. Together with the Corporate and Government Affairs department, we have developed a strategy that considers the legal and political situation where manufacturing facilities are located, looking forward to achieving full compliance without compromising the operation. Likewise, for some sites, I have created a second stage of the project to foresee the next steps related to the company’s structural changes due to the abovementioned acquisition.

I have also worked with a global task force to bring new technologies to the organisation, implementing a legal tool that will allow the automatized generation of contracts in Mexico.

For the biennium 2023-2024, I am vice coordinator of the economic competition Committee in ANADE (National Association of Corporate Lawyers).

As a corporate counsel, I have been part of cross-functional teams that have shaped and are shaping the future of the industries they are part of in Mexico.

Before Mondelez, I worked at AstraZeneca as senior legal manager, assisting the Latin American teams in the COVID-19 vaccine supply agreements signed with various governments in the region. For the first time in Mexico, I implemented an Antitrust programme within the organisation, which helped guide all patient programs and distributor deals.

I previously held the position of legal counsel at Colgate Palmolive. I served as a lawyer for Colgate’s most crucial manufacturing plant globally and successfully negotiated the clean energies’ most important agreement worldwide. Previously, I was Marketing legal counsel for the innovation team in Latin America and an active member of CONAR (Self-regulation and Advertising Ethics Council).

I started my professional career at Pfizer and its subsequent spin-off, Zoetis. Later, I worked at Sealed Air, developing the legal department overseeing Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.