About

Andrés Alvarez Cordero gained solid experience of working in-house for public bodies when he joined the Mexican government as the Undersecretary for International Trade Negotiations in 1995. Working on negotiations related to North American Free Trade Agreements (NAFTA) he later joined the NAFTA Secretariat, the office in charge of administering the dispute settlement procedures under the agreements, and was promoted to chief of legal staff after just one year. Having gained significant experience in international trade, Alvarez Cordero then spent time at KPMG in the international trade and customs practice before joining law firm Gardere Wynne Sewell as an associate. Spending nearly 12 years at the firm, Alvarez Cordero continued to work on transactions as well as corporate work. He says this allowed him ‘to become familiar with various areas of law and to develop know-how on what to look for when reviewing or providing advice on companies’ operations’. His next step was to take this experience and apply it into an in-house role. Spending one year at PepsiCo, one of the largest multinationals in the snack and beverage industry, Alvarez Codero reviewed, drafted or negotiated over 3,000 agreements, before being headhunted to join Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento De Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT), an international organisation created by the United Nations and the World Bank, which performs agricultural research on wheat and maize for developing countries. When Alvarez Codero joined CIMMYT, there was no legal department but he now leads a team of 11 to cover the 15 jurisdictions the organisation operates in across the globe. He began performing due diligences, assessments, comprehensive policy reviews and following discussion with the director general and board, streamlined a contract process for CIMMYT and updated HR policies. Following a merger of internal units, Alvarez Codero was appointed general counsel and compliance officer of the organisation in 2013, allowing him to initiate a compliance awareness plan which included anti-corruption and anti-bribery risk assessments. ‘The organisation has become more thoughtful about entering into new markets and the manner in which such entrance should be undertaken’ he says.