Mary Fernández
PARTNER

Founding partner of the firm Headrick Rizik Alvarez & Fernández of the Dominican Republic. The firm was founded in the year 1985 and has been recognized as Firm of the Year by the IFLR and Chambers & Partners in numerous occasions.

She is Ambassador for the Dominican Republic before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for the Intellectual Property Commission. She is an Arbitrator and president of the Mediation, Conciliation and Arbitration Committee of the Inter-American Association of Intellectual Property (ASIPI). She is a Judge of the Disciplinary Court of ASIPI, Arbitrator of the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution (CRC) and member of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Production of Santo Domingo (CCPSD). She is Editor for the Dominican Republic of the “International Opposition Guide” of the International Trademark Association (INTA) and a member of the editorial committee of Gaceta Judicial, the only legal journal in the country. She is past president of the Board of Regents of the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), a higher education entity of the Dominican Republic and past president of the Latin American Council of the International Section of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA). She is also past president of the Legal Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic (AMCHAMDR) and of its Board of Directors. Mary Fernandez is past president of the Dominican Association of Intellectual Property, Inc. (ADOPI) and the Fundación Institucionalidad y Justicia, Inc. (FINJUS).

She specializes in corporate and business matters, banking law, franchise and distribution relationships, foreign investment, intellectual property, insolvency regimes, arbitration, inheritance law and trusts. She is recognized as a Band 1 lawyer for Business Law by Chambers Global 2020, as well as for the areas of Corporate / Commercial Law and Intellectual Property by Chambers Latin America 2021. She is recommended by Latin Lawyer 250 2020. Her career has been recognized in the area of Corporate Law by The Latin American Corporate Counsel Association (LACCA) 2020. She is a master’s degree professor of industrial property contracts at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM).

She is Dominican and graduated summa cum laude as a lawyer from the Pedro Henriquez Ureña University (UNPHU) in 1979. She completed a postgraduate degree in Political Science and International Relations at George State University, 1979-1980. She has a master’s degree in Intellectual Property (LLM) from the University of Chicago (UIC), Chicago, USA. She graduated in 2016, with honors. She speaks Spanish and English.