Could you tell us a bit about your significant successes in your role?

With more than 13 years of experience, I am currently corporate legal manager of Peñoles, being responsible for the corporate, contracts and IP matters in Mexico and the international affairs of our operations in Peru and Chile, leading a team of 12 lawyers.

During my career, I’ve successfully led a number of mergers and spin-offs in the group, participated in project finance operations such as the first dollar-denominated bonds issuance in Mexico’s domestic market and contributed to internal protocols to strengthen corporate governance and negotiate tactical contracts and settlements agreements in Mexico and The US.

From the legal operations side, I promoted the digital transformation of the legal department through the digitisation of the corporate area, contracts, and intellectual property records; the definition of processes and policies; the development and implementation of a legal software for contract management, powers of attorney and intellectual property. Currently, it also includes litigation management and general legal services. Finally, with the definition and use of KPI’s and business intelligence tools to analyse data we have been able to make more accurate and strategic decisions. This project has improved the legal department efficiency, secured compliance, to have better management of risks, allowing us to become a strategic partner for the business.

In your opinion, what are the qualities and skills needed to form a strong legal team?

Legal teams need to be trustworthy, have a cross functional alignment with the strategic and operational vision of the business, build strong bonds through an open communication, be industrious by working hard to continuously improve, resourceful by taking care of the company’s supply and resources and results driven. Team members need not only a deep technical knowledge, but also financial and risk management awareness, resilience, and multidisciplinary skills such as creativity, agility, assertiveness, flexibility, and empathy with their clients to provide efficient solutions for the business to be more profitable and sustainable.

What is the biggest risk to your industry or organisation and how are you contributing to prepare your organisation for this?

The current geopolitical and economic situation in the world has had a huge impact across all the industries.  For the mining sector, challenges such as social and political risks, tightening of labor laws and regulations, infrastructure shortages, supply chain disruption, rising on energy costs, among others, have put extra pressure on mining companies to control costs and enhance efficiency while creating sustained outcomes by including environmental, social, and governance (ESG) not only as part of their corporate policies but also as part of their organisational culture.

In this scenario, my mission is to keep contributing by providing quicker and more efficient ways to achieve the strategic and operational plans of the business. This can be done by increasing productivity, adding value, competitiveness and return on investment by giving updated and innovative legal assessment and working with legal operations models to make better decisions based on data.