About

Syneos Health was created by a recent merger of INC Research and inVentiv Health, becoming the only fully integrated end-to-end clinical and commercial solution organisation. As the regional legal head for Latin America at Syneos Health, Gabriela Caravello has the primary role to provide legal advice and assistance to internal business units and external clients. ‘She is a dedicated lawyer, assisting the company to reach agreements with certain clients when negotiations become difficult on a specific local matter in the contracts, always understanding and protecting the business of the company in such negotiations’ one nominator states. In 2013 she joined inVentiv Health to work as legal contract associate, she was later promoted to manage the team of lawyers in Latin America and became the point of contact for all global legal matters related to clinical trials, as well as regionally leading the corporate legal department and litigations. ‘It was very hard at first because I tried to engage employees with a new structure and implement new tools and processes. I set up weekly meetings and made sure all new processes were correctly implemented to achieve high quality work. I acted as a leading figure in my team, training them and allowing them to develop their skillsets’, she says. In 2016 she was promoted to her current role where she manages a legal hub of eight lawyers and took on more responsibilities for employment and M&A matters. In her current role, Caravello has actively promoted the regional team’s work, allowing the company to recognise their capabilities as a region. She also provides legal advice and research for local regulations on certain drugs and their development in the Southern Cone region to bring global projects to Latin America. ‘This allowed me to present myself as one of the key leaders from the region and a point of contact for other departments, and gave me more confidence in my role and my capabilities as a leader’ she states. Having experienced four restructurings since her arrival at the company, ranging from acquisitions to legal department restructuring, Caravello regards it essential for a corporation in the healthcare industry to have the ability to adapt quickly to changes. As the regional legal head, she incorporated the idea of employing lawyers in Argentina to work on contract negotiations in different jurisdictions, which allows the legal team to provide quality work and documents and to protect the company in all legal aspects. Caravello has been involved in all employment litigations and mediations at Syneos Health, and is also in charge of regulatory administrative proceedings before the Ministry of Health in each Latin American jurisdiction. There are currently only a few active litigations thanks to these new processes being implemented. Summing up her role, Caravello comments: ‘Working in the pharmaceutical industry and being the lead attorney managing all Latin American legal matters, I constantly need to bring the legal points to the table to departments that have conflicting objectives and that do not understand the local laws and regulations that we need to comply with. I enjoy working within a team, being the legal voice of the company regionally but also understanding the needs of the business and other departments, [and] protecting the company from a legal standpoint’.