The Asian Legal Business awarded the In-House Counsel of the Year 2023 to Atty. Val Feria Amante who leads and manages Jollibee Food Corp.’s multinational legal team across six countries.
The Jollibee global general counsel and ethics head and compliance officer said this is an indication that the performance of JFC’s multinational legal team achieved international benchmarks.
Amante said the award was a validation that based on international benchmarks, the Jollibee Group’s legal team is on the right track in building a world-class multinational legal, ethics and compliance function.
“This will help propel the Jollibee Group towards its vision to be one of the top 5 restaurant companies in the world,” Amante said.
She was the lone Filipino awardee in the annual search conducted by the Asian Legal Business—a Thomson Reuters publication that provides insights and networking and business development opportunities to legal professionals throughout the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East regions.
All four senior lawyers of JFC’s legal team based in the Philippines were also recently recognized by the international publication Legal 500.
Amante said this shows that the Jollibee Group has formidable world-class legal team.
She said Filipinos can stand proud alongside the best of the world because of these recognitions.
“I am happy to be among the many Filipinos [who] prove this to be true. With support and opportunities, there are no limits to what we can do. I am grateful that JFC has consistently given me both,” she said.
Amante said that when she decided to join JFC’s legal team, her love for food seemed to have come first in the decision-making. “First of all, I love food, so the work sounded fun,” she said.
She said that her personal dream of being the head of a global company matched JFC’s vision to go global.
“At 32, I had the chance to take on a leadership role with a mandate to build a team. I knew it was a unique opportunity, and that I would be able to grow with the company, and I was right. The company is still growing, and so am I.”
As leader and manager of the brand’s multinational legal team, Amante ensures that JFC creates value and protects it.
Her team undertakes this mandate by driving legal compliance and governance as well as collaborating with the business and other functions to minimize legal risk, facilitate legally informed decisions and optimize business results.
Amante said that setting standards, policies and processes to facilitate legal consistency and alignment globally are among the achievements of her team in helping propel JFC’s growth and expansion in recent years.
“And balancing this with agility and flexibility locally,” she said, adding that creating and disseminating tools to empower people and manage legal risks at scale as equally important.
She said providing her team’s perspective in conversations at all levels to enable legally-informed business decisions contributed to making legal, ethics and compliance integral to the Jollibee Group’s way of doing business.
Amante’s values and priorities firmly anchor her leadership style, which are based on principles of integrity, excellence, values-driven decisions, respect, including self-respect and finding the good in everything.
“I try to find something good, something to learn, or at least something funny, in every experience,” she said.
She said that being exposed to the perspectives of my colleagues across different regions “is a lot of fun.”
“We come from diverse cultures and business environments, but across our six offices, our challenges as in-house lawyers, our definition of success in our roles, and our strategies to bridge the gap between the two, are all the same!” she said.
Almante is thankful for being able to provide for her family through the work that is both exciting and fulfilling in a company whose values and aspirations are aligned with her own.
Almante said her husband and children are proud of her working for a company whose products they all love. Alongside this privilege to work with JFC is the opportunity to give back through the Jollibee Group Foundation.
One of her most meaningful experiences was helping to coordinate its food aid efforts to frontliners in her home province of Negros Occidental at the start of the pandemic.
“I liaised with hospitals and the provincial government to schedule food deliveries to health facilities across the whole province,” she recalled. As a Jollibee Group employee and a Negrense, she felt extremely honored to have had the opportunity to help. With the award she was given, Amante is even more encouraged to work harder to make her already world-class team even stronger.