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Angélica Huacuja serves as Uber’s legal director of labor and employment for LATAM. At Uber, Huacuja is in charge of advising on Uber’s platform work as well as traditional employee-related matters that can include regulating the legal relationship between earners and platforms, proposing innovative solutions to improve independent contractor access to benefits and protections. She also proposes text for legislative reforms modernizing the social security net in countries where independent contractors are not part of the social security system.
Learn how being a mother has changed Huacuja’s practice, and how the life of an overachiever can take its toll. Huacuja might also provide some clarity about the so-called “department of no” and just how much this in-house counsel wants to enable Uber’s LATAM business.
Who was your first fictional legal inspiration and why?
Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) in A Few Good Men. I know by heart the scene at the end of the movie where Daniel Kaffee cross-examines Lieutenant Weinberg. The way in which Daniel Kaffee builds his confidence during that cross-examination is very inspiring.
What is one of the biggest misconceptions about being an attorney or the legal function itself?
That lawyers are risk-averse. We love risk. If we didn’t love risk, there wouldn’t be any litigators or in-house counsel.
What’s a piece of unconventional advice you’ve received that was helpful?
When I came back from maternity leave, a friend at work who has older kids told me that going forward, I would have to make peace with not excelling at everything, and accepting the I only needed to be “good enough”. Since then, every time I feel overwhelmed with the demands of caregiving and work, she always asks me the same question: are you aiming at excelling, or at being good enough? This has been the most difficult part of being a working mother. Being an overachiever, it’s been extremely difficult for me to accept that I cannot be the best lawyer and the best mother to my three children at the same time, all the time.
Find Angélica Huacuja on LinkedIn
