About

Fatima Wolff is senior director for legal and compliance across Latin America at Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC), where she leads a team of five lawyers covering Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Central America, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean. Wolff is known as a skilled lawyer who provides strategic and commercial advice to BSC’s operations across Latin America, but it is her expertise in the field of compliance that caught the attention of nominators. Of her own role, Wolff says: ‘Understanding how and when businesses innovate is essential to being a good counsel because we in the legal function should be fostering that innovation by highlighting opportunities. A lot of markets are driven by compliance now, which means legal teams can act as an agent of commercial change. Collaborating with the business is becoming much more important to a successful legal function than it once was, and business is also becoming more aware of the role compliance plays in its profitability. Taking a deep look at compliance across the region and asking how we can modify our operations is increasingly an area that cuts across law and commerce’. As part of her role, Wolff frequently works with health care providers across Latin America to ensure BSC’s code of conduct is met. ‘There is no other way to do business but a legally compliant way’, she says. ‘It requires a joined-up strategy that includes training, audits on our commercial partners, and frequent interaction to ensure we are all aligned. It’s not a traditional paper-based compliance programme, it’s a dynamic and hands-on approach’. These efforts have been in part a response to stricter regulatory and compliance standards globally, but Wolff says they are also a useful business development tool in Latin America. ‘We live and breathe this as a company because we want clients’ purchasing decisions to be informed solely by the quality of the healthcare products they are buying. BSC will always win on quality, so if we can help eliminate bribery and corruption in the markets we serve it will be in our interests’. Wolff has been with BSC since 2011. She joined as senior compliance counsel and has been in her current role since November 2015. Prior to joining BSC she served as general counsel with International Meal Company, where she led the legal team on a $100m private placement and offering memorandum for a $247m IPO in Brazil. She has also held the position of vice president and assistant general counsel at Norwegian Cruise Line and senior counsel with Answerthink (now known as The Hackett Group). Before moving in-house Wolff spent time as a senior associate in the Warsaw, Poland office of White & Case, worked with the United Nations International Labour Office in Geneva, Switzerland and as a commercial litigation associate at Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel, in New York City.