Mariana Olivares

I decided to become a lawyer when I was in high school. I am the very first lawyer in my family, so I cannot say it came from a sense of family tradition. However, my parents instilled in me from a young age the importance of justice and values, to do the right thing, and to always be ethical, no matter the consequences. From my very first class at law school, I was incredibly passionate about it; I knew I was in the right place.

Like many lawyers, I started my career in private practice, and had not really planned to move from private practice to an in-house role. But when the opportunity with Sodexo came about, it was too good to turn down. I remember that when I first started, I felt very strange! I was used to managing many different corporate legal accounts, and not ‘only one’. But I soon realised that, in fact, an in-house legal department also has many different clients – all the company’s other departments!