What are the key projects you have been involved in over the past twelve months?

Over the past twelve months, one of the most significant priorities in my role has been supporting the legal and operational merge between Haleon Colombia and Pfizer PFE. This merger forms part of the broader evolution of the business, which has been shaped over time through a series of strategic partnerships and joint ventures in the consumer healthcare sector.

In Colombia, this has required addressing the practical implications of integrating two well-established structures, including aligning contracts, reviewing and streamlining existing arrangements, and ensuring continuity across key commercial and operational relationships.

A second key project has been supporting the company’s geographic expansion agenda across markets within my scope. This has included assessing political, legal and socioeconomic conditions in different jurisdictions to support informed decision-making on market entry, growth and operational prioritisation. This work has been particularly relevant in a regional environment where regulatory and market frameworks vary significantly, and where Haleon continues to position Latin America as a key growth region.

I have also supported product launch initiatives from a legal perspective, ensuring that regulatory, intellectual property and compliance considerations are addressed early in the process to enable timely and successful launches. A key example is ADVITABS in Colombia, where I supported the legal strategy around product naming, including the assessment of trade mark availability and registrability, as well as managing the implications of regulatory requirements on branding.

Can you describe an instance where your legal advice directly influenced business strategy or commercial objectives?

A recurring theme in my role is ensuring that legal advice is integrated early enough to shape strategy, not just to review decisions after they have already been made. One example is supporting business initiatives that require balancing speed to market, regulatory expectations and brand ambition across multiple jurisdictions. In those situations, legal can have a direct impact by helping teams choose the structure, claims approach, contracting model or governance pathway that best supports both compliance and commercial execution.

What matters most is not only identifying legal risk, but also translating that risk into business choices the company can act on. In practice, that means framing legal advice in terms of options, operational consequences and implementation pathways. I believe the most effective in-house legal support creates confidence for the business to move forward responsibly, especially in highly regulated sectors such as consumer health.

When legal is brought in early, it becomes easier to protect the business while also unlocking opportunities, whether that means accelerating a launch, strengthening a partnership model, or helping the organisation take a more consistent regional approach to decision-making.

What key trends should in-house counsel be monitoring over the coming months?

Three trends stand out. First, regulatory fragmentation continues to intensify. In-house teams are dealing not only with more rules, but also with more divergence across jurisdictions, enforcement priorities and sector-specific expectations. For legal leaders in regional roles, this makes horizon scanning and disciplined prioritisation essential.

Second, AI is moving from experimentation to operational reality. Legal teams need to think about AI not only as a productivity tool, but also as a governance issue involving privacy, accountability, transparency and appropriate human oversight.

Third, the expectation that legal should deliver demonstrable business value is only increasing. Modern in-house teams are being asked to do more with constrained budgets, which means legal leaders must combine technical excellence with strong business judgment, process design and intelligent use of technology.

For me, the common thread across all three is that in-house counsel must remain close to the business while building stronger governance disciplines around change.

How can in-house counsel use AI to improve efficiency while maintaining quality, governance and integrity within legal teams?

AI can create meaningful efficiency in legal teams when it is applied to the right use cases, such as first-pass contract review, clause comparison, knowledge retrieval, matter triage, regulatory monitoring and administrative workflow support. Used well, it can reduce time spent on repetitive work and allow lawyers to focus on judgment, negotiation and strategic counselling.

In-house teams should define approved use cases, maintain human review over substantive legal outputs, protect confidential data and ensure that any use of AI is documented and aligned with internal policy. Legal should also work closely with privacy, compliance, technology and security teams so that AI adoption happens within a clear risk framework rather than through informal experimentation.

The goal is not to replace legal judgment, but to augment it responsibly. The legal team that uses AI best will be the one that combines curiosity and innovation with discipline, accountability and trust.

How do you manage situations where legal advice and commercial objectives conflict?

In my experience, the role of in-house legal leadership is to help the business move forward responsibly by translating legal risk into practical options, rather than stopping the conversation. That is particularly important in highly regulated environments and in regional roles where decisions often involve multiple jurisdictions and stakeholders.

In that sense, I start by understanding the business objective behind the proposal, what the team is trying to achieve, the time sensitivity, the commercial upside and the level of risk the organisation is prepared to accept. From there, I focus on reframing the discussion around options. In many cases, the best legal support is not to reject a path outright, but to identify alternative structures and implementation steps that allow the business to achieve its goal in a compliant and sustainable way.

I also believe it is essential to distinguish between risks that can be managed and risks that should not be taken. The business needs legal advice that is technically sound, but also commercially intelligible. If legal teams want to influence outcomes, they must explain not only what the risk is, but why it matters, what the consequences may be, and what realistic alternatives exist.

Ultimately, I believe the most effective in-house lawyer is not the person who simply identifies issues, but the one who helps the organisation make better decisions. My objective is always to protect the business while enabling growth, preserving reputation and ensuring that short-term commercial pressure does not undermine long-term value.