Ana Valdivieso Rovira has achieved a vast amount at Hewlett-Packard since joining its Spanish arm in 2003 as a contract negotiator. After undertaking a support role at number of different business units she was appointed legal director for Spain in 2010, and then in April 2015 assumed the position of vice president and associate general counsel for South Europe responsible for France, Italy, Spain then later adding Portugal, Greece and Israel to her remit.

Over the course of her tenure at the company, she has led many international projects and teams, with recent years being very eventful in terms of the landmark projects she has worked on. Firstly for the financial years of 2013 and 2014 she was leader of the Legal Department Global Regions Diversity Committee which leads efforts in diversity across the global department (excluding the US) then in 2015, when she took up her vice president role, Valdivieso led the implementation both in Spain and Portugal of what has been called ‘the largest corporate separation’: the splitting of Hewlett-Packard Company into two Fortune 50 companies, HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

She had the following to say about the breadth of the work: ‘The endeavour at the global level was titanic but it was also a very complex process at the local level incorporating and selling legal entities, assigning a significant number of customer (public sector included) and partner contracts; assisting with the transition of over 6,000 employees; and supporting the business in a myriad of legal issues that arose in connection with the transaction. We handled the majority of the work in-house and completed the local separation in time and below budget’.

Building on her highly praised stewardship on the separation, when HPE announced it was divesting its outsourcing division (ES) and its SW business in 2016, Valdivieso was appointed – in addition to her main role – as legal lead at the HPW WW Divestiture Management Office (DMO) for both divestments across EMEA, Latin America and Canada. ‘I represented the legal function for EMEA, Latin America and Canada in front of the Global DMO which gave me a unique perspective on how to handle multi-country complex transactions’, she states adding, ‘the role has definitely been, together with my role of lead of the South Europe Region, one of the most enriching in my career’. Other credentials Valdivieso can demonstrate is making the legal department at HPE more efficient by automatizing processes in the legal department and leading on the implementation of a tool that tracks the lifecycle of contract negotiations.

Highlighting the passion and drive needed to excel in the in-house market, she clearly enjoys her role: ‘I surely love the role which gives me the opportunity to deal every day with a myriad of complex legal issues in many different jurisdictions and to leverage best practices across the region in order to make the most efficient use of the team resources so as to better support the business’.