Luana Mendes Martinez is a Senior Corporate Counsel at Salesforce, based in New York City. She is a transactional attorney licensed in Brazil and New York who currently oversees the commercial legal affairs for the company’s subsidiary in Brazil. She has been instrumental in guiding the company through the complex international commercial customer deals and Salesforce’s growth in Latin America. Luana is recognized by the company’s leadership in Brazil and the commercial team she supports as a business partner and not just a legal advisor. Salesforce is a Fortune 500 company that has been named one of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” the past eight years, one of the “World’s Most Admired Companies” the past three years and one of Forbes Magazine’s “Most Innovative Companies” since the inception of Forbes’s list.
Through Luana’s leadership, Salesforce merged from a US contracting model to a local business model in Brazil, and is now enabled to contract, sell and bill locally in the region. Her current focus is on supporting the business team in Brazil including the development of policies and contract templates, and negotiating SaaS agreements with strategic customers. She is also responsible for leading legal trainings for the sales teams. Luana manages a local lawyer in Sao Paulo and plans to grow the department and develop a high performing local legal team to accommodate the company’s growth in the region.
Born and raised in Brazil, Luana practiced law in Rio de Janeiro for several years before moving to the United States. She started her career at IRB Brazil RE, the largest reinsurance company in Latin America, counseling the Board of Directors on matters related to international law. Later, she managed the law department for the Brazilian subsidiary of Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc., a global producer of engineered solutions and materials, where she was responsible for overseeing legal and compliance matters for the company. After relocating to the US, she worked in private practice for over 10 years at the law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb and Tyler, a New York City mid-sized full-service firm.
Outside of work, Luana enjoys spending time with her husband Steve and their three children: Lucas (13), Nicolas (11) and Carolina (5) in Montclair, NJ, where she is involved as a volunteer in different programs for the school district. One of her favorite tasks is her work in the STEM career fair, where she presents a negotiation class to middle school students, with a focus on technology contracts. Luana is passionate about children’s rights and education and is currently a volunteer attorney for the leading national organization advocating for the rights of unaccompanied migrant and refugee children in the U.S. – KIND: Kids in Need of Defense, providing pro-bono services to unaccompanied migrant children going through immigration proceedings in the United States.
Luana has a Bachelor of Law degree from Universidade Santa Ursula and an LL.M. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. She has also completed a Negotiation & Leadership program at Harvard Law School.