María Hernández

María Hernández is a partner in the Compliance and ESG practice at Eversheds Sutherland in Spain, and the recipient of the Corporate Compliance Lawyer of the Year in Spain award at the 2024 Corporate INTL Global Awards. The recognition reflects her prominence in a field that has moved to the centre of corporate governance, advising organisations on how to build and maintain the compliance and environmental, social and governance frameworks now expected of them.

Ms Hernández leads the firm's Compliance and ESG practice in Spain and heads the compliance committee of the Latin American alliance offices within Eversheds Sutherland's international network, giving her work a distinctly cross-border dimension. Her career before joining the firm included senior in-house roles, among them head of legal counsel for Southern Europe and chief compliance counsel for Europe at a multinational group, as well as leadership of legal and compliance functions for the European and Middle East divisions of large international companies. That in-house background gives her a practical, business-focused understanding of how compliance obligations translate into day-to-day corporate decision-making.

Alongside her practice, Ms Hernández is active in academia and the wider development of the compliance profession. She serves as academic director of a global corporate compliance LLM at IE Law School delivered in collaboration with a leading United States university, directs corporate compliance teaching within an international business law programme, and holds an adjunct teaching role at Deusto Law School. This combination of practitioner and educator roles keeps her advice aligned with evolving standards and helps shape the next generation of compliance specialists.

Eversheds Sutherland is a large international law firm with a substantial Spanish presence, and its compliance and ESG capability sits within a global platform that can support clients across multiple jurisdictions. For companies operating internationally, Ms Hernández's ability to connect Spanish and Latin American compliance requirements with a broader international framework is particularly valuable, whether the task is designing a compliance programme, embedding ESG governance, or responding to regulatory and reputational risk. Her work reflects a growing recognition among boards that robust compliance and ESG structures are integral to sustainable business.

Being named Corporate Compliance Lawyer of the Year in Spain places Ms Hernández among the individual practitioners the Corporate INTL Global Awards are designed to highlight, those whose expertise distinguishes them within their field. Combining private practice leadership with academic authority and an international outlook, she continues to advise organisations on the compliance and ESG questions that increasingly define how companies are governed and how they are judged by their stakeholders.