What are the most significant cases, projects, or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?

I joined Grupo Peñafiel, a Keurig Dr Pepper company, four months ago, after 28 years at Nestlé. Given this recent move, I cannot discuss specific matters from my previous role, as they remain subject to confidentiality. At KDP, I have been working on new strategic matters that are also confidential for now. These include growth and expansion projects, where Legal is supporting the business on the regulatory, contractual and risk aspects of growth from the outset.

My priority was to listen and learn, to understand how the business operates before deciding what to change. From there, we are focused on two things:

Repositioning Legal as a value creator. We are challenging processes and controls that consume time without creating value or managing a significant risk.

Building the team of the future. We are developing lawyers who understand how the business creates value, can exercise judgement in ambiguity, and use technology and AI to free up their time for higher-value work.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Leadership is revealed most clearly in difficult moments. Businesses cannot wait for perfect legal certainty, so my first step is to separate noise from material risk and decide what needs action now and what can be monitored.

Legal’s role is not to eliminate risk. It is to help the business understand which risks matter and where it can move forward responsibly. We engage constructively with regulators and authorities, bringing data and practical perspectives. Above all, we protect trust, the most valuable asset a consumer company has.

General counsel often speak of the need to be strategic to reach the pinnacle of the profession. What does being strategic mean to you?

Being strategic means changing the board, not just playing the next move. In a previous role, facing high-contingency litigation with complex institutional dynamics, I designed a strategy to have the matter taken up by Mexico’s Supreme Court. It taught me to ask not only how to win, but which forum would offer the greatest certainty and impartiality.

Over my career, I have also been at the table for transactions with publicly disclosed values above US$27 billion. Legal’s impact is measured by the quality of the decisions it helps the business make, not by the volume of legal work it produces.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Technical excellence is essential, but rarely enough. Modern counsel need business understanding, curiosity, adaptability, and the judgement to act when complete certainty does not exist. In grey areas, integrity matters as much as legal expertise. And it is not enough for Legal to see itself as a business partner; the business must experience us that way.

What have you done to further diversity objectives in your organisation?

In 2001, I advocated for lactation spaces at my workplace, and later championed flexible work and gender equity. In 2024, I issued the call to action that created the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commitment for the Legal Sector in Mexico, within the GC Network. Legal departments of leading companies now consider DEI criteria when selecting outside counsel, turning purchasing power into structural change in the profession.