Legal advice to Chinese multinational technology company Huawei Technologies in Portugal is led by Andreia Collard, a professional who has worked in various sectors such as retail, banking, health, transport and defence industries in the European and Australasian regions across her impressive career. Assuming her current position in 2014, Collard has introduced a number of changes to the internal legal support of Huawei Tech.

Portugal, starting with a ‘more hands-on approach from legal to the business’ which had the effect of ‘changing the mind-set of only coming to legal when the issue is already a problem, or is perceived as a legal issue’. Collard’s perception of a legal department is one that should be ‘part of the day to day [running] of the business and should be seen as such’, as well as emphasising collaboration with other business units which she calls ‘fundamental’ in reaching positive resolutions. Keen to mitigate challenges as they emerge, Collard is well in sync with new developments including GDPR, for which she has overseen training and implementation efforts surrounding these new regulations internally, in addition to ‘fostering a mind-set on privacy [not only] in Portugal but also at a global level with European colleagues’.

Collard’s well-rounded experience in the aforementioned issues has enabled her to foster a sense of ‘rapid adaptation and perception of the base of the legal issues at hand’, allowing her to provide focused solutions, mediation and the provision of counsel in a targeted, simplified, legal language. Summarising her career achievements, Collard is particularly proud of ‘being trained by the Obama Presidency advisor on export control for armaments, contractual negotiations with the Indian government where I was the only woman in the room, to working in a global giant in telecommunications with a Chinese culture and being able to be at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution through new technologies such as artificial intelligence and 5G’. She considers these achievements as having helped ‘open the doors for a greater vision and growth in Portugal, the small country where I was born which I believe faces a bright future’.