About

Since January 2017 Diana Patricia Ramírez Castro has been serving the multinational medical devices company ConvaTec in the capacity of compliance officer and senior counsel for Latin America. In the role she is responsible for coordinating legal activities across ConvaTec’s operations in the region whilst also harmonising regulatory and compliance approaches in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico. On assuming the role of compliance officer along with the legal function, Ramírez, says, ‘it was a challenge to assume these two functions without generating distrust in the internal clients, but it has allowed me to position the compliance role as an inherent part of any negotiation within the companies’. Explaining how she overcame internal challenges when taking over the dual role, she had the following say: ‘When the legal and compliance officer function is headed by the same person, fear can be generated inside organisations. In my current role, I have built bridges of trust with my internal clients, which have allowed me to quickly position myself as a crucial person when its time to make decisions, somebody who can be consulted without fear of reprisals. Offering alternatives to solve problems, giving adequate answers quickly and contacting key external lawyers has been fundamental to the success of my role’. Prior to her current role at ConvaTec, Ramírez spent a year as compliance officer at Boehringer Ingelheim in Colombia, before which she was in charge of the legal affairs of Bayer’s HealthCare business in Colombia. She highlights some of the important transactions she’s worked on recently: ‘In the last three years I have participated in the acquisition of product lines at Bayer [such as the] purchase of MSD’s mass consumption line and Boehringer [such as the] purchase of Sanofi’s Animal Health line). Also, I was in charge of the closing and sale of assets of the mass consumption production plant of Bayer in Cali and the sale of its distribution centre in Bogota’. She also explains how her background in private practice gave her a solid structure to excel in in-house roles: ‘Reaching the private sector as an in-house lawyer having previously been part of law firms allowed me to have another vision of the negotiation, the fees and the customer service that they provide. Analysing the litigation from the perspective of the client and not the attorney has allowed me to save legal costs and optimise the use of external lawyers’.