Secretary of the ECTA Programme Committee, CORRALROSALES, EC

Maria Cecilia is a partner at CorralRosales. She has over 25 years of experience in IP matters and coheads the intellectual property and regulatory areas. Maria Cecilia works across several different industries, especially distribution and services, energy and natural resources, food and beverage, infrastructure and construction, insurance, pharma, aviation, and retail.

Under her leadership, CorralRosales has become an indisputable leader at the local and regional level of intellectual property and regulatory. Maria Cecilia counsels numerous leading international companies as to their protection needs for their intellectual property portfolios in Ecuador and Latin America. Likewise, Maria Cecilia is widely recognised for her fight against piracy and counterfeiting with exceptional results.

In the regulatory area, Maria Cecilia oversees processes for obtaining permits and authorisations, due diligence, defense of clients in administrative and judicial processes, management of complex matters, and crisis management. She also handles issues of foreign trade and quality standards, or any other processes required to sell and exploit products and services. Maria Cecilia is recognised within the industry for her detail-oriented style, as well as for her ability to find creative solutions to complex problems, all accomplished with impressive speed and precision.

She participates actively in forums and conferences on intellectual property issues. She is the first Ecuadorian to sit on INTA’s Board of Directors and to form part of the Programme Committee of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI).
Maria Cecilia has been recognised in legal directories such as Chambers and Partners Global and Latin America, IP Stars, Latin Lawyer, LACCA, Legal 500, Who’s Who Legal, and WTR 1000. Furthermore, Maria Cecilia received the Chambers Women in Law Award for Ecuador in 2018. She is the only Ecuadorian to have been recognised among the 250 most influential women in IP as selected by IP Stars. She is a UEIPO´s Observatory International Panel of Experts member.

Maria Cecilia has a Juris Doctor degree from Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Ecuador, as well as several diplomas in various intellectual property topics. She has acted as an International IP Mediator and Arbitrator. She also has experience in the public sector, from her time as a judge of the Administrative Litigation Court. She has also acted as Chair in the first INTA LATAM Conference Cartagena 2017, International programming leader for INTA Boston 2019, and chair for the ASIPI Conference Quito 2020. Maria Cecilia sits on GLIPA´s Global Board of Directors and co-chairs the LATAM diversity pillar among various other leadership positions in different associations such as ECTA, MARQUES, INTA, and ASIPI.