Two CCLS Alumni from Latin America Share their Experience of Studying at CCLS Two Decades Apart.
Read about two very different but equally positive and inspirational career journeys.
Marcelo Rafael Tavarone (Banking and Finance LLM, 1998) from Argentina and Marcelo Sheppard Gelsi (Commercial Law PhD, 2021 and Corporate and Commercial Law LLM, 2017) from Uruguay, share their experiences studying at CCLS two decades apart.
Marcelo Tavarone tells us about his carrer journey: “I am currently the managing partner of Tavarone Rovelli Salim Miani, an Argentine leading law firm. Prior to founding the firm, I have been partner at other major local firms and I also spent a time as foreign associate at Simpson, Tacher & Bartlet offices in New York. I also work as a professor at different Argentine Schools of Law.
I attended the LLM course at QMUL on Banking and Financial Law back in 1997/1998. It was a great experience.
My time at QMUL gave me a lot of tools to undertake my career: it provided me with an outstanding education on Banking and Capital Markets and also allowed me to gain experience in the international arena.
QMUL also fostered my teaching capacities. Many of the topics and methods used in those times in classes are nowadays used by me when teaching to my students. I benefited from lectures given by outstanding professors like Rosa Lastra, Lee Bucheit and many others. I clearly see their influence in my present teaching style.
Excellence was a must in all courses, and I feel that I really completed my education at QMUL. Furthermore, it helped me to enlarge my networking and nowadays I am still in touch with many students and professors from those times. I have even been fortunate enough to have delivered legal services thanks to their referral.
I would repeat my QMUL experience in a thousand lives. It was clearly one of the best and most important decisions I made in my professional career.
I could quote many, many, many anecdotes, some of them extremely funny but I cannot avoid mentioning something very particular and very strong that occurred when I had just arrived in London. It happened that I had spent there only 10 days I had sad news from Buenos Aires: my father had passed away.
It was a shocking announcement I received from Laura (then my girlfriend, today my wife) and suddenly many hard thoughts came to my mind: would I be able to complete the LLM? Should I come back home and wait for a better moment to attend it?
I travelled to Argentina to attend the funeral and in a couple of days I was back in QMUL. I must say that the support, human quality and sympathy of teachers, administrative staff and other students was incredible, and it definitely helped me to overcome such a personal challenge. I am still nowadays grateful to all those people who approached me with kindness and sincere appreciation in that moment of grief. What else could one expect from a university?”
Marcelo Sheppard has a very similar positive experience: “I knew that going to Queen Mary would be both a challenge and one of the most important experiences of my life. What I didn’t know was that I would meet two people who would change my life for the better, Professor Rosa Lastra and Professor Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal.
When I arrived in London to start my LLM at CCLS, I met with Professor Lastra, and I immediately knew I wanted to take her two modules: International Financial and Monetary Law and EU Financial and Monetary Law. The same happened when I met Professor Olivares-Caminal, that year I took Insolvency Law and Mergers and Acquisitions.
Rosa’s classes were particularly enriching. She introduced me to many CCLS professors and distinguished guest speakers, including Legal Counsels from the IMF, the World Bank, the EBA, and leading international law firms. After completing her courses, she offered me the opportunity to work as her Teaching Assistant in both modules, an experience I immediately accepted. She was very generous with her knowledge. A year later, we co-authored a research article that was later published in the Law and Ethics in Banking and Finance Research Handbook.
Rodrigo’s classes were fondly remembered by all students for their precision and the demanding nature of his exams and, needless to say, for his ability to capture everyone’s attention and his great sense of humour.
I vividly remember when QMUL organised a conference in Oxford with Sir Roy Goode as keynote speaker. Meeting him in person was an extraordinary experience; he was deeply involved in every aspect of the event, attentive to every detail, which perfectly reflected the excellence and spirit of CCLS.
After finishing the LLM, both Rosa and Rodrigo kindly agreed to supervise my PhD.
I remember that in the first year of my PhD I had to take a key exam in order to move forward in the program. I was coming back from Uruguay and had booked a flight with a layover in São Paulo. It had never happened to me before, but the flight was cancelled and I had to leave the next day. The exam was at 2 p.m., and I arrived in London at noon, so I went straight from Heathrow to CCLS to sit for it after a 12-hour flight. My face must have said it all, but the examiners kindly overlooked my dark circles, and in the end, everything went well.
Both Rosa and Rodrigo worked as a great team and guided me to complete my Viva Voce in the middle of the COVID pandemic and obtain my PhD in 2021.
Over those years I learned a great deal about banking and commercial law, but, above all, I was fortunate to find two mentors whose generosity and dedication made it possible for me to come to London full of hope, and return to Uruguay with both an LLM and a PhD. Every time I return to London, the first thing I do is visit them at CCLS and thank God for having met two people who changed my life and whom I am now proud to call my friends.”