Tatiana Maillefaud – Cushman & Wakefield

While Tatiana Maillefaud always dreamed about being a legal manager for a global company, she couldn’t predict that she’d end up as the regional legal counsel of an international real estate services giant. Yet every turn in her career, from high-stakes litigation to the daily realities of in-house counsel, honed the judgment and resilience she brings to Cushman & Wakefield today. As legal manager for South America, based in São Paulo, she leads with a clear thesis that has guided each chapter of her journey: disciplined process and human empathy are not competing values; they are the foundation of sustainable growth.

Tatiana Maillefaud | Cushman & Wakefield | Legal Manager, South America

Maillefaud’s legal instincts were forged early in the crucible of litigation. Fresh out of law school, she argued strategic cases for clients in telecommunications, agriculture, and automotive, learning to read nuance in dense contracts and build narratives under pressure. Managing nearly ten thousand lawsuits for a major telecom client pushed her to industrialize quality, so she designed standardized templates that cut through noise and enabled faster, more consistent responses. That experience of solving complexity through structure became a recurring motif.

She stepped into leadership by running a small team representing a public energy provider, then pivoted to real estate at Coelho da Fonseca. The title on her first day was executive assistant to the CEO. The title that mattered thirty, sixty, ninety days later was Legal Counsel, because that was the role she grew into by negotiating property contracts and guiding families to the finish line of homeownership. The work connected law to impact. It also made clear that the most effective counsel helps the business breathe.

Her move to Carrefour in 2008 marked a point of no return. The global retailer needed an in-house lawyer who understood how litigation scars could shape risk-smart contracting. She refined her real estate and commercial expertise, became a partner to operators, and earned opportunities abroad, including time with Decathlon in Lille and a short stint at the headquarters of a global real estate company in Chicago. Those years taught her how global systems function and where they often break, especially when local realities are treated as rounding errors.

Motherhood deepened her grit. In 2017, the birth of her twin daughters, Giovanna and Maria Luíza, brought joy and a new challenge when Maria Luíza sustained a birth injury that required continuing care. The pandemic arrived soon after, compounding the load. With faith, her husband’s support, and professional help, Maillefaud learned to navigate complexity at home and at work with greater steadiness.

Building systems that scale

Cushman & Wakefield hired Maillefaud in 2022 to manage the Brazil legal team, sharpen processes, and align the function with the business. Within eighteen months, the team had become a model of partnership, and she was promoted to legal manager for South America with a mandate to scale that approach across Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay.

Her first priority was apparently simple: put every contract and every matter into one secure, searchable system. Before implementation, contracts could live in unauthorized drives, desktops, and email attachments. Continuity suffered when staff took vacations or moved on. Sensitive terms were hard to monitor. Maillefaud framed the change not as a legal imposition but as a productivity tool for everyone. With the support of the board and executive leadership, she held listening sessions with business leaders, explained how centralization would protect data and reduce friction, and showed how cycle time would improve.

The results validated the case for change. Contract reviews now move faster, continuity is safer, and collaboration is easier regardless of location. Most importantly, the repository secures the company’s most valuable asset in the digital age, information.

“We protect what matters for our clients, partners, employees, and suppliers,” she says. “That is the real promise of a legal system that works.”

Standardization is the second pillar of her strategy. By building clear, service-line-specific templates, the team accelerates drafting and negotiation while keeping local market risks front and center. Shorter service-level agreements and faster response times have followed, and business teams have gained greater autonomy to close deals within guardrails. The templates are not one-size-fits-all; they are practical frameworks that cross borders while respecting the laws and practices of each country.

“Consistency and local relevance can live together,” she notes, “if you design for both.”

One company across South America

The third pillar is cultural. Cushman & Wakefield’s DRIVE values, being Driven, Resilient, Inclusive, Visionary, and Entrepreneurial, are not wall art in Maillefaud’s region. They are operating principles. She insists that integrity and outcomes are inseparable, coaching her team to bring ideas that enable the business while mitigating risk.

“We understand that financial goals must be achieved, but not at any cost,” she says. “There is always a higher price to pay for doing it the wrong way.”

To make the values tangible across South America, she invests in relationships with country heads and functional leaders. Shared language helps, since Spanish smooths communication across several markets, but trust takes time. She acknowledges facing gender bias and the extra scrutiny that can shadow Black women in leadership. Her answer has been steady delivery, visible empathy, and clarity about standards. Regular in-person meetings and informal gatherings give teams the space to connect as people, compare experiences, and build the muscle of collaboration that speeds cross-border problem-solving.

Clients feel the effect. When the legal function presents a consistent face across countries, clients experience reliability and speed. When a multinational issue arises, regional leaders can align quickly because they already share context. That unity reduces friction and reveals opportunities.

“When people feel part of something bigger, they give more of themselves,” Maillefaud says. “That energy shows up in client trust and in business results.”

Her approach is also visible in the way she navigates international agreements that involve U.S. negotiations. Global master services agreements often reflect months of effort, and there can be reluctance to adjust terms once signed. Maillefaud works to bridge that gap by aligning early with global teams on which provisions need localization to be enforceable and market-fit. Involving local counsel and clients before finalization, and documenting the standard set of local deviations, turns potential conflict into a managed process. The goal is not to reopen everything, but to ensure that what is signed can actually be performed.

Leadership, growth, and the work of care

Maillefaud’s leadership is as much about what she builds as how she builds it. She credits her boss, Samantha, with modeling a blend of trust, challenge, and humanity that she now extends to her own team. The company has reinforced that with leadership programs such as McKinsey Accelerate, cross-functional projects, and mentoring that stretch her perspective beyond legal questions to business strategy. She feels seen, encouraged to lead with her values, and invited into conversations that matter.

“I have a seat and a voice,” she says. “That sense of belonging fuels my ambition to serve at a higher level.”

Ambition, for her, is not an abstraction. It is a daily discipline of solving complex problems and managing people with respect. The pandemic clarified how swiftly the balance of work and life can tilt. She believes companies should invest in well-being, skills, and community, not only because it is right, but because it sustains performance. At home, she is a mother, a wife, and a professional with global aspirations. The load is real; so is her resolve. Integrity, empathy, and respect are not negotiable in either sphere.

Within Cushman & Wakefield’s narrative, Maillefaud’s story sits within a company built to shape real estate that works for people. The firm advises and executes across leasing, facilities management, project and development services, capital markets, and valuation, serving clients whose footprints and needs span continents. In such a business, contracts are arteries, and governance is circulation. Maillefaud’s team keeps both healthy by pairing structure with service.

That service is visible in everyday choices. She urges her lawyers to think differently and to be bold in proposing enabling solutions that still protect the enterprise. She anchors her counsel in compliance, partnering closely with the region’s compliance manager to anticipate conflicts and maintain clear boundaries. She treats negotiation as the craft of finding the path that works for all parties while standing firm on what cannot be compromised. Above all, she keeps the function connected to the people it serves, from corporate leaders and service line operators to suppliers and client teams embedded in facilities.

Making the complex simple

The throughline in Maillefaud’s work is a commitment to making the complex simple without becoming simplistic. Centralized systems, standard templates, and clear protocols are tools, not ends. They free people to focus on strategic questions, shorten the distance between decision and execution, and give leaders confidence that the legal foundation is sound. They also create space for humanity at work, the simple gestures and shared time that transform colleagues into collaborators.

There is a quiet conviction in the way she speaks about the future. She wants to succeed her boss one day and lead at even larger scale. She wants the region to keep modeling how integrity and performance reinforce each other. She wants young professionals, especially those who do not always see themselves reflected in leadership, to know that excellence and authenticity can go hand in hand.

“Believe in yourself,” she says. “Then build the systems and the relationships that help others believe with you.”

In South America’s varied legal and cultural landscape, that blend of belief and design is a competitive advantage. It is also a humane one. Maillefaud’s path from litigator to regional legal leader reveals what happens when a company’s values meet a leader who has tested hers in life’s hardest seasons. The result is a function that makes the business faster and safer, a more united team, and a region better equipped to serve clients with consistency and care.

The work is never truly finished, but it is always moving forward. Contracts get clearer. Risks become more visible and manageable. People feel more connected. And somewhere between a new template and a late-night call with a country head, the complex becomes simple enough for progress to happen again tomorrow.