Hispanic Heritage Month Podcast - Traci Martinez & Magali Ferreyra

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

So I was born and raised in Argentina most of my young and adult life, and I came to London — coming to 11 years now, so a while ago — to do a masters. Originally after uni, I finished a law degree in Argentina, kind of was unsure about what to do next. I guess a lot of people can relate to that. And then I said, what better to do than travel and study at the same time? So I came here to do my masters, very much with the plan of going back after finishing my one-year masters, which was in human rights law. And then life happened and I decided to stay in London, and here I am, 10 years later, very much happy to be here.

Well, that's a very interesting question. I think that has changed throughout the years for me, because at the beginning of my experience here in London, it was very much about taking in the English culture and the culture here and trying to feel like I fit in. So it was definitely a more slow journey of kind of — I wouldn't say ignoring my roots because it wasn't that — but I was living with family at the time, and my cousin was very much like, 'You need to have English friends, you need to not speak Spanish, don't be connected to anyone Latin, just, you know, submerge yourself in the experience.' So I took his advice and it was very good in a way because I was able to create very good connections and build friendships here. And, you know, it's a very kind of bumpy ride sometimes moving abroad and feeling a bit homesick, so it was good advice. But then eventually I did start to feel like I was a bit disconnected from my roots, and I would say in the last six, seven years I was able to reconnect with people that I actually knew from Argentina that moved here. And, you know, word of mouth of like, 'Oh, I know this person and I studied here then,' and then started building my group and my kind of support group here. And I'm very happy to say that nowadays some of my best friends are from Argentina. They live here, we get together very, very frequently. And the ways we connect with the culture is food, usually — having a good asado, like it's a barbecue, or going to an Argentinian restaurant, or just getting together and eating some good food, listening to music that relates to us, going to events. There was the World Cup a couple of years ago that we won, so we were very proud about it. So it's about finding those events and surrounding yourself with people from your country or people that love your country, and it kind of fulfills a lot of that emptiness that sometimes you feel, and it makes your heart warmer.

Oh, that's a hard question. I think I would do the same. I think no regrets. It was definitely a journey because it's the first time you move abroad as a foreigner, you definitely feel like an outsider sometimes. And I guess doing it that way made me feel like I belonged a bit more. It was good to, you know, dive into the language. When I first came here, I spoke English, but the slang and the accent and the different accents in the UK — I was like, 'This English?' It was very confusing. So I think I would do the same because it was kind of shock therapy type of thing. And then in the last few years I was like, 'Okay, now I'm ready to go back to my roots a little bit.'

So I do business immigration, which is part of the labor and employment department, and we very much help clients to deal with all their immigration strategy when it comes to global mobility in the UK. So I specialize in UK law, but we also sometimes act as a kind of coordinator if they need help for other jurisdictions. So it's very much holistic advice — not just giving visas or helping clients get visas, but also from a strategic perspective, from a business perspective: what's cost-efficient, how do they remain compliant. So it's very interesting. I've been doing it for eight years now, so it's very good.

So yeah, first of all, that's absolutely right. As an immigrant myself, I think I can relate more to the clients and the employees that we help because I can understand how kind of unsettling sometimes the experience can be. So I try to make the journey as seamless and as easy as possible for the client, and hopefully that kind of experience that I had myself gives me that inner insight of how it's a very nerve-wracking experience. And then when it comes to my background and cultural heritage, I think as an Argentine, we're very much — sometimes a bit loud — but we're also very approachable and very, very sociable. We love building connections, and I think that's something I've really taken on board in all my professional journey, because I do think it's about building connections. Life is about that, but at work as well. And I'm so interested in just getting to meet people and learning about them and learning about their journeys and their backgrounds as well. So I love that, and I think I've taken that as well, and hopefully people enjoy that part of me.

Squire Patton Boggs is really good at creating employee groups that help you connect and that help you connect with people that have similar interests and backgrounds and, you know, heritage. And I think with Hunos it has been a really, really fulfilling experience for me because it's not only about meeting people that share my heritage or that are interested in my heritage and my background, but it's also meeting such new people that I wouldn't have been able to meet probably — just you, Traci, and the rest of the team. And time difference, you know, I think we're navigating it quite well. This call today is very early for you, so thank you. But I think it speaks volumes that we are able to connect across the world in these conversations and that people are actually interested in each other. I think that assists a lot. And the time difference is an issue, but not that much. But we are actually launching our Europe chapter of Hunos, which hopefully will open doors to people across continents of Europe and the UK to join the group, and hopefully the time difference won't be an issue then. I don't think it will.

I think just that if anyone is thinking about moving abroad or making some sort of a move of any sort, I would encourage them to do it. I think I have never learned so much about myself as I did when I moved to another country. I think being an outsider, as I said before, is not something that people experience sometimes, and you learn so much about your strengths and you just grow so much as a human being. And I'm so excited to keep being a part of Hunos, to expand the Europe chapter, and to keep meeting people. I think, as I said before, it's all about connections and just making us a stronger team and a stronger law firm.