Legal and compliance director, Latin America | UPL
Thelma Perez Soares Correa
Legal and compliance director, Latin America | UPL
Career Biography
Thelma Perez Soares Correa is an experienced legal professional, currently serving as Legal and Compliance Director at UPL do Brasil. With a solid and multifaceted career, Thelma has over three decades of experience in both national and multinational companies such as Alcoa, Pirelli, Philip Morris, J.Macêdo, and UPL/Arysta Lifescience. She also served as a substitute judge at the São Paulo State Administrative Tax Court (Tribunal de Impostos e Taxas) from 2007 to 2012.
Throughout her career, her work has focused on areas such as international contracts, complex litigation—particularly in tax matters—intellectual property, antitrust law, regulatory law, corporate restructuring, and M&A projects, as well as compliance and data protection (LGPD). She holds a Master’s degree in Latin American Integration from the University of São Paulo (PROLAM – USP), and has completed additional training at institutions such as the University of Toronto, ISE Business School, Saint Paul Business School (ABP-W Program), and Melbourne Business School, where she completed the course Digital Transformation: Leading Yourself, Your Board and Your Business in 2025.
What new pressures are you facing from the business as expectations for legal to act as a strategic partner continue to grow?
Expectations of the Legal function have expanded significantly in light of the complexity of UPL Brazil’s business and the current competitive and macroeconomic environment. The business expects Legal to go beyond technical compliance and act as a strategic partner in decision-making, in protecting enterprise value, and in enabling growth.
One of the key challenges stems from the highly complex and time-consuming regulatory environment for chemical products, involving ANVISA, MAPA, and IBAMA, which imposes long registration cycles and requires significant investment. In this context, the Legal and Regulatory teams are under pressure to anticipate risks, support portfolio decisions, and contribute to launch and prioritisation strategies—including the use of litigation to accelerate product registration—in a landscape where time-to-market has become critical to competitiveness.
At the same time, the sector faces intense pricing pressure due to the massive influx of off-patent Chinese products, which has intensified competition and reduced margins. This has increased the need for Legal to work more closely with commercial teams, supporting contractual strategies, intellectual property protection, complex negotiations, and the safeguarding of competition law compliance, while maintaining efficiency and agility.
Brazil’s macroeconomic conditions—high interest rates, currency volatility, and legal uncertainty—further raise expectations of Legal, which is increasingly called upon to play an active role in risk analysis, strategic planning, and supporting critical business decisions, often under significant time pressure.
There is also a growing expectation that Legal will act as a guardian of the ESG agenda, integrity, and the company’s reputation, integrating regulatory, environmental, compliance, and governance considerations into business decisions in a structured and preventive manner.
All of this takes place within lean organisational structures, requiring Legal to deliver strategic advice, manage complex matters, and support key projects, while also driving efficiency, prioritising risks, and communicating clearly with non-legal stakeholders.
In essence, the core challenge is to help the business move forward in a safe, competitive, and sustainable way within one of the most demanding regulatory and economic environments in the sector.
