About

Since July 2011, and after spending more than five years at Huawei Technologies’ legal department, Juan Pablo Ovalle has been the country counsel for Colombia and the LCR at IBM de Colombia. He has led the team on all the innovations that IBM has implemented in recent history and says that IBM is unique in that it forces you to reinvent yourself constantly. For example, when he joined IBM it had ATMs within its portfolio and today it works on artificial intelligence. He says, ‘that has made me as a lawyer think out of the box, change the way I work, change the focus to form a business perspective and catch up with the needs of the company. That has made a huge impact on the company’s perspective about the legal department’. Ovalle’s curiosity, of seeing the law from a wider perspective, allows him to anticipate new legal trends, regulations and products which is key to keeping up with developments in a fast changing environment and avoid becoming obsolete. He has also adapted to the company culture of IBM, a US based company, from Huawei a Chinese company, and he says that adapting to this cultural change was key to his success at IBM. Also, he has adapted to working on the wide variety of legal issues facing general counsels from labour issues to compliance, regulatory matters, and real estate to be an industry leader.