Page 2 - Sheppard Mullin Alumni News Fall 2022 Newsletter

• ALUMNI NEWS • FALL 2022
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW: JENNIFER SALINAS
Jennifer Salinas
Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary Cerence, Inc.
Burlington, MA
Formerly IP Group, 2008-2016 Orange County Office
We are delighted to profile former Sheppard Mullin partner Jennifer Salinas, now Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary of Cerence, Inc in Burlington, MA.
Career Path
Jennifer is a native Angelino – she was born in San Pedro and raised all over Los Angeles but laughed that “living nowhere desirable probably is the best way to describe it, growing up with pretty limited means.” She was the first in her family to graduate from college, let alone go to law school. Her mother came from Mexico when she was 14 and worked in the fields, and her dad dropped out of high school to join the Army and served in Vietnam, so neither were able to help her navigate her education and professional career. However, they did instill in her a strong work ethic that she carries with her to this day.
Jennifer did very well nonetheless, attending San Diego State University with a B.A. in Political Science, then obtaining her J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where she graduated cum laude and Order of the Coif.
After working at an Orange County-based law firm, she practiced in Sheppard Mullin’s Orange County office as an intellectual property partner from 2008 to 2016. She went in-house in 2018 as Head of Global Litigation for Lenovo in Morrisville, North Carolina, rising to Executive Director, General Counsel of Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group. She recently moved to Cerence, Inc. (“Cerence”) (CRNC - NASDAQ) in Burlington, Massachusetts in April 2022, where she is Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary.
Current Roles and Responsibilities
Cerence is a a public company formed in 2019 after Nuance Communications decided to turn its automotive division into an independent company. Cerence is the world’s leading provider of automotive assistants, creating intelligent, flexible and intuitive in-car experiences for the world’s leading automakers. You can find their technology in 52% of all vehicles globally (equating to 450 million cars) and they remain a leader in automotive voice and AI innovation.
Jennifer commented that “we are known for our voice assistants. So if you’re in your Mercedes or BMW or other major car brand and talking to your infotainment system, that’s most likely our technology.” She continued, “Cerence actually invented one of the most well-known voice assistants, so basically all voice assistants stem from us. We also own Swype, so if you’re typing on your phone and use the swipe-to-type function or predictive texting, that’s our technology. It really is what separates us from the rest. We aren’t fast followers but instead our technology created this market.”
She describes her extensive experience in the tech space as one of the reasons why Cerence hired her. Jennifer noted that “one of the things that people don’t know about being a General Counsel is that in addition to being the company head lawyer, you are a business executive expected to have a strategic mindset.” As a strategic advisor, she truly has a seat at the table, working hand- in-hand with her CEO and CFO, leading a team of 11 in-house counsel and paralegals who work on a broad range of transactions and litigation. “I like to say that I spend a significant amount of my time calling balls and strikes,” Jennifer remarked.
“There are three principles that I learned while at Lenovo that I still operate by and everything falls under these three buckets: (1) Our job, my job, and my team’s job is to protect the company, first and foremost; (2) We need to enable the business; and (3) We need to deliver excellence,” she continued. “Delivering excellence covers everything, but really it’s not just protecting the company, which is what immediately comes to mind when you think of a legal department. That’s table stakes. We must also enable the business. Those legal departments that can think outside the box on how to enable the business are the ones that the business does not shy away from but are invited to sit at the table.”
Importance of Outside Counsel
There aren’t many innovative offerings from outside counsel on the technology front, but client service is a priority that gets her attention. When Jennifer first went in-house four years ago, a client said she was “going to be somewhat stunned by the lack of good client service,” which has unfortunately proven to be true.
The outside counsel who really do a standup job are those who know what she’s dealing with and provide her with easy, pragmatic solutions. In fact, she’s currently working with a toolkit that one of her outside counsel provided, knowing that her fiscal year was about to end September 30th. That they were always thinking of her was important and mirrored her own philosophy when she was outside counsel, as she was always thinking “what do my clients need that is easy to digest?”
Sheppard Mullin’s “Clients First” program is an example of putting clients’ interest at the forefront. The placard with the client service standards always sat on her desk and helped to engrain her service culture. “I will say with respect to Sheppard Mullin, in particular, they stand out in underscoring client service, and I attribute a lot of my own personal success to providing exceptional client service.”
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