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

In the past twelve months, I had some projects that truly changed the direction of the company.

I was co-lead on a business assurance project, which was directed to map and classify all the regulatory statuses and obligations for all of our business verticals at inDrive. The project helped establish a mechanism to track the regulatory requirements to maintain and launch a business for the company in any country. It also helped define a specific mechanism to classify the risks of every regulatory requirement. The project impacted all business areas, allowing for faster business decisions, and was scaled globally.

The Colombia labour reform project consisted of transforming and preparing the delivery (couriers) business vertical for the new labour reform, which impacted this vertical strongly. I led the legal part of this project, and we took a leading position in the drafting of the regulation of the law. We got acceptance on various key topics for the regulation, and also prepared the basis for the legal compliance of the vertical, ensuring that it remained profitable for the business.

I was the Latam representative on the Support4Support project, which involved ensuring full compliance with local regulations when users contact the support channels. This meant that this first point of contact would be fully protected from the legal side, avoiding future contingencies. I trained and prepared the Latam support team for the project, and it was scaled and adapted globally, ensuring a safe but fast response in all of our channels.

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

One key example is the project mentioned regarding the labour reform in Colombia. This reform was approved before my arrival to the company, so I did not take part of the drafting of the original law, but I did advise on the bylaw regulation. The organisation was considering shutting down the delivery couriers vertical, which was a growing business for the company. However, my advice made operation and compliance feasible, and in the most profitable way. I also took the opportunity to draft the comms on how the company is complying with the new labour regulations, which creates a positive perception among users.

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

For in-house counsel, AI is no longer an advantage or a plus: it is a necessity. I also am a professor of AI for lawyers at the Javeriana University, Bogota, and so a good knowledge of AI is key. In our company, the legal team is in an advanced AI stage; we have licences for Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT for all legal teams, as well as AI integrations with tools such as Jira, Confluence and Gmail. For us, the legal profession is evolving, so we constantly use AI for improving efficiency in operative tasks and investigations. But with this evolution, quality governance and integrity are a challenge. Quality is addressed through experienced expertise; the professional preserves the ability to understand full local context, feelings of business and chances to take risks. Governance and integrity must be the base, not only with policies, but also with continuous training and review. In-house counsel must also be conscious that the legal profession is different now; we can’t be lawyers of the past.

Organisations are facing increasing regulation across jurisdictions. How do you embed compliance across the business?

This is quite an interesting challenge for me. My job involves being the legal advisor for the whole of Latam, and asses the regulatory challenges in this region. But Latam is a region that is in a constant state of challenge, movement and regulatory uncertainty. The ride hailing industry is not fully regulated in the majority of latam countries, but the region is the company’s fastest growing and highest profit in the world. This is because we adopted a mindset where, despite the challenging regulatory status, we choose to push forward, to keep growing and have creative ideas. This is possible thanks to the regulatory compliance advice we give, so the business can move despite the grey zone

How can general counsel help drive responsible governance and ethical decision-making across an organisation?

In a highly competitive and fast-paced world, ethics and governance are key. For me, when I’m advising my company, I maintain that I’m not growing a business for the next few years, but to create the bases for a business that can last for one hundred years. What keeps that bases together is ethics. When we, as lawyers, make sure that our contracts, policies, business, activations and partnerships are guided by worthy principles, we see that these relations and projects are protected and long lasting. Nowadays, a reputational risk, compliance issue or authority investigation can take down a business easily, which is why it is so important to have a well-prepared general counsel, who can ensure the longevity of the business.