Gavioli revs up legal team at Harley-Davidson

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Maira Gavioli grew up in a tiny town in Brazil. At the time, it had dirt roads.

Now, she’s corporate counsel at internationally known Harley-Davidson.

“I always had big dreams,” Gavioli said, “but I didn’t know exactly how it would pan out. I just kept pushing and just kept being optimistic about the future.”

Gavioli’s path to those dreams involved going to law school not once, but twice — once in Brazil and once in the U.S. She also took three bar exams, worked in private practice in both countries and worked in-house at GE Healthcare before she landed a job at Harley.

Gavioli’s work with Harley involves litigation, marketing and advertising and other matters. One of the most memorable transactions Gavioli has had a hand in ended up putting the Harley logo on the jerseys of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Gavioli is a leader in Harley-Davidson’s legal department, said Jon Keyser, Harley assistant general counsel. He said other lawyers at the firm aspire to be like her and that business people there seek her out for advice.

“Maira has the rare ability to quickly understand complex legal issues, distill them and offer business-minded legal recommendations,” Keyser said.

For Gavioli, working in-house was always a goal. Although she enjoyed being a transactional lawyer, she wanted more.

“I thought, ‘One day I’m going to go in-house. I want to go behind the scenes. I want to see how they make those decisions,’” she said. “And that’s the part I enjoy the most.”

Gavioli says that she is inspired by similarly situated women, especially a group of close women friends she went to law school with in Brazil. They’re spread all over the world and have taken different paths. Some ended up working in-house, like Gavioli, whereas others are in academia or run their own law firms.

Although the legal profession may still have a long way to go, Gavioli said she thinks women have a bright future in the profession.

“Set your mind to whatever you want and you can make it happen,” she said. “That’s the beauty of being in the U.S. That’s the beauty of being born at the time that we were born.”