Category: Interviews

Because I am a woman, it’s very important to me that, in an organization, women have equal treatment and equal opportunities to anyone else. Diversity and inclusion means being recognized for my talent, ability, my individual characteristics and it’s important that, based on those, I can compete and develop with equal opportunity.

The importance of inclusion

But having a diverse team in an organization is not enough to get all the benefits that diversity brings. There must be an inclusive and open environment that guarantees this equal treatment and opportunity. I heard in a training session that diversity is when they invite you to the party, but inclusion is when they invite you to dance. If you don’t work on inclusion, you won’t have the environment that you need to develop your career as a woman or as a minority. You need a safe place where you can express your ideas, your different viewpoint. In my experience at different companies, women can help to develop the business because we have different perspectives than men.

For many years, I have participated in D&I initiatives, for example leading D&I committees, developing minority support programs, developing diversity management models, and participating in mentoring and sponsorship programs.

Work-life balance

I love mentoring, especially when the mentee is a woman starting out in her working life, because you can share your experience, and help other women to open up the workplace and develop their professional career; give some advice about how to balance personal life and work. I’m married, I have children and for me this part is very important, because I need to have a very good personal life in order to give a very good work performance. I need this balance in my life. Through mentoring, I can give young women tips or advice to help to balance personal life and work and about the importance of co-responsibility in caring for children.

That’s a big challenge because, traditionally in Chile, men work and women stay at home. It’s part of our culture. Unfortunately, the pandemic has impacted women more than men in terms of employment, and also due to the increase in childcare. Co-responsibility is a new concept for us and we need to work on that, to involve more men in work at home.

Only 14% of board members of IPSA companies (the top 30 companies with the largest stock market presence in Chile) are women. However, there has been an advance because, ten years ago, this precedent was close to 4%. In the legal field, things are not very different. Although today there are more women lawyers working at law firms, at the partner or general counsel level, there are very few. We are proud that SMU is one of the two IPSA companies in the country led by women. Our chair and vice president of the board are women, and we have three female board members.

Culture

In our company, D&I is a priority. It’s included in the company strategy plan, it’s one of our pillars, and the company has a management model based on our code of ethics. We have a cultural code called ‘CERCA’, which means Closeness, Excellence, Respect, Collaboration and Agility. Our culture is very important, because it tells us how we do business, and through actions and activity in the company, we seek to influence employees, their family, our clients, suppliers and the community. We have different programs in the company to support different groups, for example women and people with disabilities.

The legal team

The legal team promotes and lives the values of the company in terms of diversity and inclusion. I think we are an example for other teams. 59% of the legal team and 67% of the legal top management are women. My team has actively supported the creation of policies, procedures, and action plans related to D&I, protection of human rights and sustainability for the whole company. We have supported this process with the people team and have prepared training in these kinds of matters. The company has many activities, and my team supports all of them in their creation and organization, not only as participants.

The team has participated in a sustainability volunteers’ program. We have promoted female talent by giving them visibility, for example three women from our team represent the company in trade associations.

During 2020 and 2021, the team participated in a development program implemented for the first time in the company, which includes mentoring and sponsorship activity. We had the opportunity to put forward two women and one man as mentees, and I mentored two women.

I think as an in-house legal team we can contribute a lot. For example, we have experience of working with diverse teams from other areas, we have colleagues not only of different genders or groups, but also from different professions. This allows better collaborative work and knowledge exchange, and we share all that experience and good practice with everyone and, of course, with our external lawyers. I think we can help our outside counsel to promote these matters.

We are a client of many law firms and we contribute by giving visibility to talented women lawyers and in hiring law firms led by women. For example, in the last year we hired a law firm led by female partners for an important company matter, and we had an excellent result and developed an excellent relationship with them.

It’s very important for me, for my team, and for the company, that those who work for us share our special culture. When we hire a new law firm, as a woman, I always like to know how many female partners or minority group members the law firm has, and I share with them the importance of having women in the team.

In my opinion, in-house life is more diverse than private practice, because we are part of the company and we have relationships with other areas, other professions. SMU has many initiatives related to flexible work, different schedules to help everyone, not only women, and different thinking in everyone to try to have the same diversity in the company as in the society. My company is a retail company, we serve clients in society, and we need to have more diversity in our teams to better serve our clients.

In Bolivia, unequal access to justice undermines the possibility of equality in society. As a university student, I volunteered with a human rights organization that worked in a women’s prison here in Bolivia. Most of the women that I worked with were survivors of gender violence, and it quickly became clear that many women were in jail simply because they did not have the money to afford a lawyer, not because they were likely responsible for a crime. Most of these women did not know their rights, so we worked with them to explain their human rights, help them with their legal cases, and share information on what their futures might look like.

It was obvious to me that the system had failed these women and that they needed a way to escape the vicious cycle of poverty and violence. For me, the answer was simple: help women support their families and themselves so that they could leave violence behind and start a new life.

This chapter of my life defined me. I knew that I wanted to continue to fight for women’s rights and women’s empowerment. At Pro Mujer, we spend every day working to make these objectives a reality.

Closing gender gaps

The gender gaps in the financial sector are alarming. Globally, only 6% of investment capital goes to companies led by women, and 70% of women do not have access to capital to start a business. In Latin America, women’s access to funding is even bleaker. Covid-19 has further exacerbated the situation – the progress made over the last 10 years in terms of achieving equality in the labor market has been erased, and rates of gender-based violence have exploded. In Bolivia, the figures are sobering: every day, a woman is killed by gender violence, and only one in three cases is ever reported.

Gender equality contributes to poverty reduction and boosts the economy. According to McKinsey, closing the gender gap would result in an automatic increase in global GDP of 11%, and GDP in Latin America would increase by 14% if women were encouraged to participate in the economy and received the support they need to do so.

Data show that if you give a woman access to loans, they tend to use the money to support their family and be more productive than men. In 2021 alone, Pro Mujer disbursed US$269 million in loans to women who were unable to access traditional financial services. Pro Mujer uses a holistic approach to positively impact women’s lives. We go beyond just financial inclusion and access to microfinance loans, offering access to health services, digital inclusion initiatives, and skill-building opportunities.

In 2021, we provided 400,000 health services, including 3,000 free mammograms in Mexico, preventive health services for breast cancer and cervical cancer, access to a chatbot for diabetes prevention, and access to contraceptives.

Pro Mujer’s community health workers also play a critical role in our health and well-being initiatives, as they are able to reach women in rural areas where hospitals and doctors are scarce. Each community health worker is trained to detect risk factors in their communities and refer women to a health clinic, if necessary.

Over the past few years, Pro Mujer has also ramped up its focus on digital inclusion. Today, 67% of women have access to the internet. We strongly believe that digital tools will allow us to offer more financing and training opportunities to more women.

In addition, we are working together with US Vice President Kamala Harris as a member of the Partnership for Central America and have committed to increasing our impact in the Northern Triangle, reaching more than three million people with our services. To meet this commitment, we will be opening an office in Guatemala.

Gender lens investing

Pro Mujer is committed to strengthening the gender lens investing ecosystem in Latin America by creating investment strategies, sharing best practices with investors that want to create impactful social change, and offering technical assistance to private companies to help them get gender smart.

In 2019, Pro Mujer partnered with Deetken Impact to launch the Ilu Women’s Empowerment Fund. The Fund invests in a diversified portfolio of high-impact businesses that support women in leadership and governance, offer products and services that meet the needs of women and girls, develop gender-sensitive value chains, and support workplace equity.

In 2021, the Ilu Women’s Empowerment Fund was awarded funding from USAID to develop the ILU Women’s Empowerment Program. This program seeks to increase gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean through three main components: incremental capital, technical assistance and knowledge sharing, and advocacy.

Within the framework of this program, we launched the Ilu Toolbox, an open-source platform featuring more than 30 resources to help companies address gender gaps and implement strategies to attract gender lens investing.

Identifying the appropriate legal mechanisms

In the past, the role of general counsel was more to put out fires. These days, the general counsel is a key business partner that should be involved in an organization’s business decisions from the very beginning of its operations. Pro Mujer is always working to expand its impact footprint and empower more women. Our role as a legal team is to identify the appropriate legal mechanisms so that Pro Mujer can expand its footprint through alliances and support more women. Latin America is very politically volatile, and we must navigate a lot of legal challenges in order to continue our work.

At Pro Mujer, the legal team must go beyond the role of legal advisor to make sure that the organization is able to continue to impact and empower women. The most rewarding part of the job is going out into the field and hearing the success stories. Knowing that we have had an impact on the lives of our employees and clients is truly gratifying. We have supported women who are survivors of gender-based violence and have empowered them to start a new life. One specific success story that has stayed with me is that of a woman who has been a part of Pro Mujer for more than two decades. Twenty-four years ago, she started to sell boots in the streets of El Alto; now she owns a factory.

The role of in-house lawyers is different today than it was 20, 30 years ago. Now we are the dealmakers of the organization, and we must become thought leaders for our organizations – we are not in the back office anymore.

Not just any policies: The right policies

As members of the legal profession, we must think about the impact we can have and the critical importance of supporting women. In Latin America, many women do not have access to the courts or to fair laws, and the region is very behind in everything to do with dealing with gender-based violence. There is a lot of space to improve the laws, but it is also necessary to ensure equal access to the court system – because you can have perfect laws, but if women cannot access the justice system, those laws are useless. I think there are a lot of opportunities for lawyers to be proactive, to make our voices heard, and to identify how we can help improve women’s lives.

Something that concerns me is the fact that a lot of people do not speak about sexual harassment. When I started my career, many years back, it was something that you had to live with. I sadly have personal stories about sexual harassment; as a woman, it was just something you were expected to deal with when you navigated in a men’s corporate world. Today, times have changed, and although sexual harassment is no longer acceptable, there is still a long way to go.

As members of the legal team, we are involved in creating company policies, and these policies must include gender inclusion and diversity. I strongly believe that gender inclusion must be mandatory in every company’s internal policy—gender inclusion should not be optional. It is our role as inside counsel to make sure that the policies not only exist, but also that the right policies are in place and are effective.

Having a diverse team brings different points of view to the table where a specific solution or point is raised because of the unique perspective of an individual based on their life experience and identity. I have been in situations where someone raised a point that was within my blind spot, and without which the group would not have reached its ultimate decision. I also believe that diverse teams have the ability to be more creative and innovative in their way of thinking leading to better decision making overall.

A diverse team also tends to share more and therefore tends to be more involved and more engaged. Better engagement results in teams with strong talent retention. Beyond being good for performance, it also results in a better work environment, better culture, happier employees and gives you more access to a better talent pool – it’s a good cycle to be in.

Another key aspect to the importance of diversity is when it comes to leadership positions. When younger diverse talent sees people who reflect their own diversity in leadership, they see people that they can identify with and feel more represented and willing to stay for longer in an organization. For example, if you are a woman and see other women in leadership positions, I think there is a sense that you can trust that your own perspectives will be better represented because similar life experiences create an empathy.

Beyond gender, I think the importance of representation goes for all traditionally underrepresented groups. If you have people in leadership positions with different identities, backgrounds, etc., it creates a greater sense of trust that anyone that works hard can succeed, regardless of their background. In addition, this trust become cyclical because once you succeed you want to stay and help lift up those who are coming up behind you. All of this creates a better environment, group of talent and overall performance, as studies have shown.

When it comes to how we serve our clients, having diverse teams is also incredibly important because studies show that diverse teams consistently outperform teams that lack diversity. It is also critical that we are able to demonstrate value alignment with our clients when it comes to fostering an inclusive culture. Many clients are demonstrating that diversity is a top priority. Therefore, law firms that in the best case scenario are seen as extensions of that in-house team, must be able to further reinforce that.

To me, diversity and inclusion means the possibility for anyone to have the opportunity to participate, or to make an improvement in, their career on an equal basis with anyone else.

I belong to a percentage of the population that could do that – I am at director level after a long career of 25 years – but the conditions that we had to accept at the start of our careers are quite different to those we are trying to achieve nowadays. For example, if I had to go to an interview 20 years ago, I was compelled to wear a skirt: I remember that in my first interview as a junior associate. And nowadays, when I hire someone, I don’t care if that person has put on their résumé that they’re a man, or a woman or whatever.

Follow the rules

I think that certain practices regarding diversity have to be implemented with rules so that change can work. While we’re still talking about the idea, nothing will change. And I think that for my team to comply with this goal, and with my beliefs, I need to directly set some rules considering diversity.

Last year, Argentina passed legislation compelling public sector companies to give 1% of positions to transgender people. If you’re a private company and you achieve that 1%, you have certain tax benefits.

But last year, the Public Registry of the City of Buenos Aires (PR) tried to compel organizations to give at least 50% of board seats to women, but that regulation was attacked by certain private associations and the resolution was struck down.

There is certain view held within the corporate landscape that says, ‘ok, we can have a good corporate governance program, and let me do my job, let me decide who I want and when I want certain changes to my board or management level or key officers – but do not impose that through a law. I don’t want to reject a man just because a law says I have to comply with giving 50% of seats to women’. That’s the discussion that has been set for bills regarding quotas today in Argentina, and we are expecting to see what can be done.

In summary, we are not in the top countries for prioritizing diversity in Latin America. We are trying to improve this, but the private sector is not convinced.

Using that seat at the table

I’m a member of the Argentine Chapter of Women Corporate Directors (WCD). This is an international association, with chapters around the world, where women that have certain board seats in listed companies, have meetings and offer job opportunities to other women at any point of the corporate ladder. For instance, if a company in England needs someone bilingual who has expertise in the energy sector, WCD shares information around the world, and the search starts between us to find résumés.

In addition to that, since I am a member of the board of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, and a trustee of Caja de Valores S.A., I participate in certain meetings with the government and try to participate in the development of legislation concerning all of this stuff.

I arrived at Edenor in July 2021, so I have only been here for six months, and one of my goals was to work on our new corporate governance code, including specifically a chapter on diversity. Likewise, we are working on a sustainable bond to be launched probably in 2022, and one of the measures of the sustainable bond will be diversity.

Previously, Edenor didn’t have any key officers as women, and now, out of ten at the table, there are three women. Any vacant role at the company has to be opened with at least three candidates and at least one should be a woman.

The most difficult part of this is with engineers. We have an industry where it is so difficult to find electrical engineers, and it’s even more difficult to find electrical engineers who are women. So we are working with certain universities to provide seminars, trying to seek women that could be interested in exploring the energy sector. We have a program that we call ‘Women in Edenor’, and in that program we try to focus on including more women in the company at the different levels we seek. My team is comprised of 100 people and 65% are women. For any new lawyer or student that would like to work with us, I follow the three résumé rules, and that one of these should be a woman.

I think that in-house lawyers can play a significant role in driving diversity and inclusion, because when you work at a listed company, you have a lot of opportunities, through complying, for example, with the rules of the SEC, or the London Stock Exchange, which helps you to have a significant role in diversity decisions throughout the company.

I love the way the DEI team at Johnson and Johnson puts it: you belong. I love it because it’s about feeling comfortable to bring your true self to work.

It’s indispensable to have everybody’s point of view – if you have customers, patients and stakeholders all over the world, it’s important to have a wide variety of people inside the Company.
But, in addition to that, I think when you’re comfortable being yourself, you’re more creative. You feel better about raising your hand and shouting out your ideas and about participating. I also think when you’re comfortable being yourself, you’re better engaged.

Getting the culture right

We always think about our law department culture as one of camaraderie. We get invited to speak, with colleagues from other countries, about the future of our law department and how to make it better, and we’re always focused on making sure that, even as our department has grown over the years, we keep that camaraderie culture. I think we’re succeeding in that process, and I think that’s a very good grounding for DEI.

We have periodic training on different topics, for example, on unconscious bias, on building trust, and on many subjects related to DEI.

We also have Employee Resource Groups – we have groups that champion women, we have the ‘open and out’ group, which is a group that supports the LGBTQIA+ community, and we recently launched a group in Colombia that is supportive of indigenous communities.

We have been learning from the US team, which has been very active in examining racial inequality and social injustice; we’ve had book-clubs, we’ve had movie discussions, we’ve had experts come to talk to us.

Something that we had recently, that I thought was incredible, were some talks by experts on menopause, which is something that is part of being a woman, but we sometimes take it for granted. We are taught about giving birth, about being a mother, and about many things, but not about something that is so inherent to our lives as menopause. That, I think, is how inclusive our law department is.

Living DEI day-to-day

In the law department at Johnson & Johnson, one of the members of the leadership team of our general counsel is always responsible for DEI, and at the regional levels we also have leaders of DEI initiatives and DEI committees. We have some programs and initiatives that are global, and others that are regional. DEI is part of our strategic planning in the law department, and people report on our DEI efforts regularly.

We have some global objectives that we have to complete within the year – so there is some training we have to complete, we have to make sure that our goals include DEI goals, and in our conversations with our leaders, we report on how we met or did not meet those goals. But we also have a DEI committee at the regional level and, at the LatAm law department, we have our own strategic planning that we have to present to the global council. We report to them at least every quarter, and tell them how we’re doing, what we’ve finished, what we didn’t, and whether we completed our plan or not.

I think our law department leaders have made the law department really live DEI; it’s not something to check the box, but it’s really in our way of thinking.

Appreciating difference

I had a chance to lead the law department DEI group for Latin America a couple of years ago. We wanted to make sure that we respected everybody’s holidays, so we made a calendar to make sure that no regional meetings were ever scheduled during special holidays for different people in the group.

We tend to all speak Spanish in the meetings and leave our colleagues in Brazil on the side, so we tried to work on that by balancing the meetings – having some parts in Portuguese and some parts in Spanish. We even shared some glossaries of words in both languages, so we could all feel more comfortable.

We had an initiative called ‘beyond the label’, where with each LatAm law department newsletter, we got to know one of our colleagues – so, for example, someone might be the IP lawyer, but they are also interested in wildlife conservation and had a chance to live in Africa in an elephant nursery. We’ve had things like that, to connect at another
level.

It might not be rocket science, but these are things that keep us on our toes and thinking about how we’re different.

The importance of listening

On a personal level, I think being constantly reminded of the importance of listening is key in DEI. Lawyers are used to talking a lot and, in a way, we may not be so good at listening. I think the best way to make sure that everybody feels welcome, and that we hear everyone’s voice, is if we learn to listen.

I think legal strategies benefit greatly from other points of view, so I always discuss the important strategies with the business, with our marketing director, with our general manager, and I think that’s also inclusion. And that comes together with leaving aside the legal language – I like to think of myself like a translator, translating legal language into business language.

Latin America is a melting point for ancestries, ethnicities and races, making it one of the most diverse regions in the world. It is also a region where minorities face significant barriers to employment. For example, recent studies show that around 90% of board seats are occupied by men. If women are not represented on boards of those huge companies that are listed, it’s hard to claim a true commitment to diversity.

ADP’s executive team in Latin America has a 40% women representation. This is well above the market average in the region. ADP was recently recognized by Great Place to Work (GPTW) as a top employer for women in Chile and Peru.

We were able to reach to this point because of the tone at the top. ADP has taken several affirmative actions to make sure diversity and inclusion is part of our DNA. In ADP, diversity and inclusion is not an HR only issue. The leadership team strongly supports D&I actions.

ADP has a global diversity and inclusion office, with dedicated associates. The D&I office works closely with HR and leaders of business units. The leadership is highly engaged and involved in diversity and inclusion globally. In Latin America, each senior leader sponsors a Business Resource Group (BRG). Since I joined ADP, I have sponsored iWIN’s activities in Latin America.

ADP’s iWIN

iWIN (International Women’s Inclusive Network) is ADP’s BRG with a focus on gender equality. iWIN currently has around 7,000 members across 16 countries around the globe. That is a big chunk of ADP’s 60,000 employees.

iWIN’s activities are conducted by a global board comprised of 25 ADP associates and by local chapters distributed in different regions and countries. iWIN organises events to create awareness, education and training – on unconscious bias, for instance. Our main goal is to make ADP a more diverse and inclusive place, not only in the workplace, but we also think about how we can impact the business and the communities close to us.

Doing the right thing

At ADP, the legal team plays an important role in terms of providing the business a perspective on what is the right thing to do. One of ADP’s main value is ‘integrity is everything’. Integrity is about doing the right thing all the time. In this sense, diversity and inclusion is the right thing to do.

When the legal team organizes the compliance week and trainings in Latin America, we educate our associates on anti-bribery and other relevant compliance aspects, but we also take the opportunity to discuss conduct, respect and inclusion. We create opportunities to discuss with associates about being inclusive and respectful with their colleagues at work, with family members, and when using social media.

Keeping an open eye

Corporate legal departments play an important role in promoting diversity and inclusion in the legal market in Latin America. We can influence the private practice market as clients and exchange experiences through our network groups.

When diversity and inclusion is part of your agenda, you will constantly call attention to inequalities, share practices to improve D&I awareness. It is important that in-house counsel keep an eye on what law firms are doing in terms of diversity and inclusion: if they have their own policies and if they are taking real actions towards their associates.

In Latin America, we have our eyes open to prioritizing discussions about minorities, either on the compliance training, hiring process, or when choosing a service provider.

First, we should make mindful decisions about who we hire and resist the urge to favor people who look like us, went to the same schools as us or grew up in the same towns as us. Then, once you have a diverse legal team, be mindful that everyone’s experiences are different, and just because something has worked well for you, does not mean it will work well for me. Unsolicited commentary about the way one person handled a situation could be received differently than may have been intended so we should be aware of the impact of our words. Allow lawyers to develop their own styles and manage their projects as they see fit as long as the common goal to fulfill a client’s needs is being met.

Part of the benefit of working at a law firm is that a client has access to lawyers who have expertise in different subject matter, and transactions are not handled by only one lawyer or a group of lawyers with the same knowledge. The value a diverse legal team provides for a client is perspective and broad experience, which translates into a client being able to hear different sides to an argument or consider a strategy that had not been presented before. Having different voices in the room, in just the same way that having lawyers from across different practice areas in the same room, ensures that more ideas are being heard, with the ultimate goal to settle on the best one of the bunch.

A few examples include: (1) I think a best practice is that when a matter is being staffed, a senior lawyer should call each person on the team and tell them why he or she would make a good addition to the team. This adds instant loyalty and a sense of purpose for the lawyer. Compare that to an impersonal email alerting a group of lawyers about the new project. (2) At the start of the project, along with reminding everyone about the client’s needs, the most senior person should articulate his or her expectation that everyone on the team will actively contribute to the matter. Then follow-up. If you notice that the same people are the only ones speaking, specifically ask the others to weigh in and frame it so they know you are interested in their ideas. (3) Utilizing 360º feedback is also a simple but effective technique that allows people to feel heard (and of course, implementing changes based on that to the extent appropriate).

Latin America is a diverse region, with over 660 million people of various ethnic groups and ancestries: Amerindians, white, mestizos, African descendants, Europeans, among others. It is essential to all companies and their workforces to continuously reinforce the need for diversity and inclusion in their work environments and, most importantly, in the Latin American boards and senior management positions, which data indicates are more than 90% occupied by men, mostly from a similar ethnic group. Diverse groups have raised their voices to increase awareness and fight for their rights and needs in the last 20 years.

However, with the ‘new’ diverse groups, such as LGBTQIA+ groups, you see very different positions. In larger cities, such as São Paulo (Brazil), Mexico City (Mexico), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Santiago (Chile), Bogotá (Colombia) and Lima (Peru), you have more respect and more protection of such rights. However, if you go less than 100 kilometres into the interior of these countries, that situation changes significantly, and people are much more provincial and less open. While governments have passed laws accepting various rights for these groups that were long awaited (such as same sex marriage), and principal media channels have supported many of those changes, there is still a big divide amongst those in society that live in the large city centres and the populations of more remote interior areas.

Historically, legal professionals were quite reserved about the topic of diversity and inclusion. In the last five years, this has changed very positively. Law firms are openly promoting diversity and a free environment. This change was supported by the new generation of lawyers, who wanted to see those values and principles embraced and actually lived in the work environment, whether in-house or in a law firm. Law firms had to rethink their standards of what they were looking for in a lawyer. Most law firms, now more than ever, know the true value of having lawyers and paralegals with different backgrounds, and even different qualifications and experiences, that bring new ideas to the legal solutions and advice provided to their clients.

Bringing diversity to life

At my workplace, I can proudly say we promote diversity through many different actions. One, most importantly, is to respect diverse people and their rights. Another is to talk about it openly and have training sessions to raise awareness and consciousness of how important it is for any company to bring diverse teams to work together collaboratively, respecting each other, and promoting innovation. Day-to-day, these actions translate into a very positive work environment, where people learn from each other, bring new experiences and ideas without fear. People have the freedom to succeed and change. I truly believe that promoting diversity is a tool to reach greater performance in terms of solutions and products, and ultimately makes people happier.
We have many internal programs supporting diversity and inclusion, such as having more women in management positions at all levels. We believe we are at the beginning of a journey, but we are, every day, bringing that to life.

Removing the filter

Five years ago, we first recognized that we needed to do more in terms of having a diverse legal team in Latin America. We were pretty much all from the same background, very
similar in terms of life choices and, although we were, at the time, divided equally between men and women.

As a team, we thought: what could we do better to be more diverse, and to support diversity and inclusion? First, we had a training session with one of the internal ambassadors, and he opened our eyes to simple actions that we could do as part of our daily routine, and when recruiting people, which would have great impact in promoting this value.
We can proudly say we are a much more diverse and united team. We have embedded diversity in our actions within our team and beyond, when selecting our external advisers and new people for our team, for example.

We look at each other as professionals who work hard together to deliver visual health products and services, focused on our mission. And we don’t judge.

Influencing others

I believe that, as lawyers, we have a huge role to play in diversity and inclusion, because we interact with multiple teams, partners, customers, external advisers and their respective communities. We are their trusted advisers; we are responsible for ‘opening their eyes’ to this important value. We also interact with government authorities and organizations. If we understand the influence we exercise during those interactions and use those to support diversity and inclusion in the respective workforces, together with our other colleagues (such as the leaders of organizations and HR, to name a few), we can be a motor for change in Latin America and other regions.

Many people are still blind about the benefits of such change and know nothing about the consequences of not respecting such values. We have historically embraced cultural and ethnic diversity, we are people moved with different and unique passions for life, which makes us who we are as Latin Americans. Why not take our diversity values to another level?

The result will surely be having a happier and more inclusive work environment, where people enjoy their work and learn from each other, putting aside any pre-conceived ideas or prejudice that can prevent us from performing well collaboratively.

As of 1st April Ana has been appointed GC for Asia Pacific and India.

GC: Alejandra, how would you describe what diversity and inclusion mean to you? Why are they important for the corporate landscape?

Alejandra Bogantes (AB): In an organization, they are very important, because we need to make people feel comfortable.

If you accept them and let them be who they are, you are going to have employees that want to work with you. If you defend them and respect them, they are going to respect the company, and try to accomplish our goals and our vision and mission.

GC: How would you characterize the diversity and inclusion culture at Walmart?

Bob López (BL): To give you the background on this approach, we have core values for the company. One of these core values is respect for the individual in regard to differences – differences in mindset, background, education and so on.

But we also have an ‘Associate Value Proposition’ (AVP), which has five different pillars. The first one is purpose, the second is challenge, the third one is opportunity, the next is enjoyment, and the last (but not least!) is inclusion. For us, it’s really important to be an inclusive company, and that’s why we made the decision to include this pillar as part of the AVP, both internally and externally.

At this point, we’re focusing our efforts on four different approaches for the company: gender equity; people with disabilities; the LGBTQIA+ community; and the non-discrimination pillar, which is the newest one, and is working towards eliminating those barriers when it comes to talking about race, for instance.

For the company, it’s really important, and it’s part of the business strategy. We have goals to reach, we have KPIs for the company, so we are putting together all of these different thoughts within the company.

We also have a diversity, equity and inclusion council. This is a group of business leaders that are working towards an inclusive workplace for everyone within Walmart. This is not like the typical HR team working for inclusion, it’s more about the business leaders working for inclusion for the company, and they are bringing their expertise, they are bringing their ideas, and they are the ones that are writing this change. They know the business very well, they know very well the pain points that we may have in the stores, in the distribution centres, or in the home offices, and they are putting in place an action plan towards a more inclusive environment in Walmart.

In addition, one of the key actions that we have implemented since last year is to partner with external organizations outside Walmart, so we can bring their expertise within the company, and make better decisions for our associates in every pillar.

GC: It’s interesting that you mention KPIs, because it’s that sense of ‘what gets measured gets done’. How do the KPIs work; what does that look like day-to-day?

BL: We have different KPIs in regard to gender equity, and with regard to talent with disabilities. We have a work engagement survey, and last year we included a voluntary self-ID for the LGBTQIA+ community and for people with disabilities. That way, they could give us their responses and we could assess how they feel working for Walmart and with that information we have created different action plans to improve the work environment for these groups. This is also the first year that Walmart México and Central America has included a self-ID for race, because we wanted to know if we had racial diversity within the company, and how we can leverage people’s working experience within Walmart.

GC: How is the legal team supporting the company in its diversity and inclusion efforts? How does the team fit into that structure?

AB: As a legal department, we are an example and a role model for the company. We have to always act correctly – and not only look like we are acting correctly. We have to make sure the company complies with its policies and complies with the law. We help HR and the committees when they have any kind of question. We support area staff operations too, to make sure that they can explain what we are doing – we know that there are a lot of people that have prejudice and we try to make people understand. For example, we sometimes have cases where customers don’t want to go to a certain cashier because he has long hair, or tattoos, and we as a legal department have to tell them, “well, he has the right to look how he wants – we don’t have policies about how you look at work”. We have to support our employees and make them feel safe and protected by us, and we as a legal department promote a lot of efforts to make people feel comfortable.

In our legal department, we have a lot of people of different ages, some of them have kids, some of them are single parents, some of them have different sexual orientations, and we try to make the team feel completely united. We are very close, and we try to let people know that one of our values is that we are a diverse group, and we have different ideas. For example, the younger ones sometimes promote ideas about tech systems that can work for us to make things simple, and you know that people, when we are older, we sometimes don’t understand how things are going to work. So, I think that we make a really good balance.

We follow the company’s policies, and in case someone doesn’t feel respected or supported, the company has an ethics department, where people can file a complaint and they will investigate to make sure that the legal department, like everyone in the company, is compliant with the policies, and with our ethics code of conduct.

We have an open-door policy, so that everybody can go to their boss, or the boss of their boss, or the CEO of the company, to explain their concerns, and they have to listen to them. They don’t have to be afraid of retaliation, because they are allowed to express what is concerning them.

GC: Do you think that in-house legal teams have an important role to play in driving D&I? How do you think in-house legal teams can contribute to that conversation?

AB: As a legal department, people are looking to us. If the legal department is doing something incorrect or is not promoting diversity and inclusion, people are going to think that they can act in the same way. The risk is that if the legal department is not compliant with company policies, people are going to consider that that is ok, because we establish what is good or not, or what is correct in accordance with the law.

Also, the legal department has a section in our engagement letter to external lawyers where we request them to promote diversity and inclusion in their firms. For us, it’s very important that our external lawyers share our values; that they try to make a difference in society.

I think that Walmart is really working to make a difference in terms of diversity and inclusion. We are a big employer in Mexico and Central America, and the company is really trying to invest in helping people to understand what diversity and inclusion is. If our employees understand, they are going to start making a change in society, they are going to make that change with our clients, and we are, I think, contributing a little bit to making a difference.

BL: Being one of the largest companies within the region, we truly believe we can make an impact because of the cascading effect that we may have across society.

I’m going to try to say this as simply as possible: we have more women in the world, and women live longer. We have a group of people living longer without the financial resources to live well. If you consider that women don’t have a way to pursue a profession or financial independence, that economic model is not sustainable.

Of course, I could go to the UN and bring the numbers – ‘We can bring three trillion dollars into the economy if we achieve gender equity.’ But you should think of this in simpler terms: if you want to have people purchasing, living and having financial independence, you need to have everyone in the work environment.

The same arguments apply to people with disabilities, transgender people, LGBTQIA+ people and racially diverse people. We need to have everybody working; we need to have everybody pursuing financial independence. That’s the only way we can have everybody an the same table; everybody with the same resources for housing, health and education. If you take these people out, you’re going to have a huge gap in the future. We need to make it feasible for everybody to be able to work.

Access to education

Today, we have a lot of women in Latin America who are able to get into university to reach the legal profession. However, when you climb the pyramid to pursue higher positions, there is still a gap.

We still have a lot of red and yellow flags regarding children and girls. We have menstrual poverty, we have a lack of education. I think we are doing a good job with established women: we have young lawyers, we have a lot of mentorship, we have done a lot to address the women that are already in the workforce – those who have graduated from law school, graduated from engineering school, for example – and we are organizing a lot to help these women to grow.

But I feel there is a gap in terms of how we are helping all children, all girls, to achieve this step, and to really achieve a high-quality education. In Latin America, you have a lot of women who are able to go to school in the large urban areas. But if you move to the countryside, to the farms, to the less developed cities – oh my god! The girls share their time between housework, family work and also school. They don’t have access to proper places to clean themselves, proper places to study. I think it’s something we need to really think about. We are doing a good job with the women who are able to achieve education but what are we doing for the kids who do not have the same access to education?

Creating the conditions

Rock Content is a Saas Company in digital marketing, and we have this fun start-up environment. There are a lot of young people, and I have to say they have a different view about diversity and inclusion – they see that it is natural.

We have a leader for diversity and inclusion, and we are starting to have a lot of conversations and policies to raise awareness for the company about every aspect of diversity.
We have a lot of allies, to help diverse representatives. One of our goals at this moment is to bring in more people with disabilities.

We have also been thinking a lot about education. We have two main initiatives. One is led by the social impact area of the company, and we give scholarships. The other is that we are about to become a member of ‘Pledge 1%’, an initiative to commit 1% of our equity and employees’ time to educational initiatives.

An incredible journey

Rock Content is a really different environment from much of my career. My click with diversity and inclusion started around 2011 when I first achieved the GC position, and I was the only woman at the table. At that time, I was in the insurance sector, a market where I worked for 12 years, and an environment that, in Brazil, is very masculine and non-diverse.

I said, ‘I don’t want to be the only woman at the table, I don’t want to work in an environment that doesn’t see diversity as part of the strategy.’ So that’s when I started to take some actions and become an advocate for diversity and inclusion. I went to Harvard to attend the Women’s Leadership Forum, and I created a workshop for women in my company. After that, together with two other female GCs in the insurance sector, we created a task force in the Brazilian Insurance Confederation. In 2018, we founded a diversity and inclusion institute for the insurance market in Brazil. So that was the beginning of an incredible journey – we saw a lot of impact from what we started in the market.

Today, if you go to insurance companies in Brazil, all of them have some consideration for, or policy, initiative or target for diversity and inclusion. We see a lot of changes, not only as individual companies, but also as a sector.

Giving opportunities

At Rock Content, I’m a super ally for diversity and inclusion. I’m not only supporting the aspects of it, but also to make it visible, to start to help to drive policies and procedures, to have a diversity and inclusion framework that can also incorporate and embrace the company as a whole. I’ve been working really hard with our leader in diversity and inclusion, and also the head of education and the head of social impact, in order to really make sure that our environment is really inclusive.

One of the initiatives is around people with disabilities, so at this moment we have a lot of lectures and information-sharing regarding that. In September, we had a huge presentation for the whole company to help everyone understand not only the importance of employing people with disabilities, but also how we can embrace this.

We have initiatives like ‘Women Rocks’, ‘Inclusion Matters’. One of the pillars of our business is ‘Rock University’, and we give a lot of lectures, courses and we provide scholarships to low-income families to be able to attend the courses.

Within the legal team, I always pursue people with disabilities, women, and minor representation. I don’t like to say ‘minority’; I like to say ‘minor representation’.

At this moment, I’m hiring, and when they published the vacant position, I asked for somebody with a disability. It’s not only about walking the talk, it’s something that l believe: I need to give opportunity. Our company language is English, it’s our first language globally, even in Brazil. As a legal-compliance department, English is almost crucial. I know that hiring a person within minor representation groups with English knowledge is going to be challenging. But I decided, you know what? Let’s try to find somebody. Even with basic or intermediate English; we are going to develop this individual and provide support to grow as a professional.

A healthy workplace

Motherhood is part of our world, and in every team I have led, I’m always an advocate for parental leave, not only for women but also for men. At Rock Content, it was one of the goals for our CEO and so what we have today is a ‘family’ leave policy. Men and women across the globe have the same amount of leave, so we’re not talking about different policies for men and women. We are talking about four full months for everyone who becomes a mother or father. That’s why we call it family leave. And we give flexible hours too.

Among the other policies that we have established, especially in the current remote-working environment, is ensuring that work breaks will be respected. Lunch hours need to be respected too. No emails at night. These initiatives are crucial for a healthy environment.

In law, our foundational base is human rights – as lawyers, we are trained to observe human rights, and with diversity and inclusion, we are talking about fundamental human rights. It’s the right to have access to employment, to healthcare, education, to have a house. So as lawyers who work in enterprises, we make sure that we are complying with human rights, with labor laws, and make sure that we have equity. As lawyers we really have the tools to make this happen – to create healthy workplaces.

Since speaking to GC, Ana Paula de Almeida Santos has left Rock Content to become general counsel, head of legal and compliance at Argo Insurance in Brazil.