Early in Hector Pineda’s 29-year legal career at Shell USA, he had the opportunity of a lifetime to take an overseas assignment in The Netherlands. It was the influence of two mentors — his boss, John Esquivel, and Pineda’s grandfather — that led him to take the opportunity.
Esquivel assured Pineda that he would be successful when he had little faith in himself, and Pineda’s grandfather helped Pineda’s mother and grandmother — who were upset over the prospect of him going — to shift their perspectives and better understand why it was in Pineda’s best interest to go.
Pineda spent three and a half years overseas for Shell, and his successes while abroad laid solid foundation for future advancement in his career. Today, after a series of promotions, Pineda appreciates just how impactful the servant leadership exhibited by both Esquivel and his grandfather was.
“When I reflect on that moment, I can appreciate the gifts that they gave me,” Pineda said of his two mentors. “They helped me to eliminate the hurdles of doubt or guilt; they both helped me to be my best and to contribute in ways I didn’t know I had in me. That assignment truly changed my life for the better.”
Now associate general counsel of Shell’s downstream and renewables teams in the Americas, Pineda is known within the company as a servant leader himself. Instead of his own individual achievements, he considers his biggest business successes as witnessing the growth of younger colleagues he’s mentored as they become leaders themselves, being a voice for those whose voices need to be heard (particularly within the diversity, equity and inclusion context) and guiding and caring for the legal team during times of crises, like Hurricane Harvey and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pineda is particularly known as a leader within Shell’s DEI culture, and his continued work in that area — both throughout his career and more recently — are why colleagues nominated him for the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook’s 2024 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion. ACC Houston and The Lawbook have named Pineda one of three finalists for the award. The winner will be announced at an event tonight honoring the finalists.
“Shell Legal, the entire Shell organization, DE&I organizations near and far and individuals are all better, more diverse, stronger and more fulfilled because Hector chooses every day to be an exceptional person and champion of DE&I,” Shell senior legal counsel Eric Maddock wrote in nominating Pineda for the award. “He is passionate about DE&I and that passion permeates the legal organization (both in the U.S. and globally) to inspire others to be a little better every day, to treat people a little kinder every day, and to accept others more willingly every day. In short, to be a better person not just for themselves, but also to others.”
As a lead sponsor for the Shell US Legal Department DE&I Council, Pineda has helped build transparency at the company through his role in a project that made Shell’s U.S. workforce diversity data accessible to employees and foster a more inclusive environment through the council’s coffee chat program that pairs up Shell newcomers with veteran teammates. He’s also helped promote personal growth for both younger and more experienced employees through a traditional mentorship program as well as a “reverse mentorship” program.
“In addition to applying his enormous legal acumen and skill on the daily projects he works on and manages himself at Shell, Hector has always taken the time to mentor and develop younger attorneys and staff members,” said Haynes Boone partner George Y. Gonzalez, one of Shell’s outside lawyers. “I have always been impressed with his natural and welcoming leadership style, taking a genuine interest first in helping expand the experience base of the professionals on his team and in the company more broadly. He has consistently helped identify internal and external opportunities for his team members to grow in their careers.”
At his retirement party, Esquivel said he recalls Pineda telling him that he believed in Pineda when he didn’t believe in himself, and he sees Pineda now being that pair of eyes for junior colleagues.
“I think Hector saw that and valued that, and applied it in his leadership role of seeing potential in people and developing and nurturing potential in people that they might not even see in themselves at the time,” Esquivel said. “If that alone was my legacy at Shell, I’d be very proud of that.”
Growing up West of the Mississippi
Pineda was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and grew up just across the Mississippi in the city of Westwego. Pineda and his younger brother are the product of two families immigrating to the U.S. in the 1960s: his mother’s family from Cuba and his father’s from Honduras. Pineda’s mother was a consumer liaison and interpreter for a mental health clinic. His dad retired as a pilot for UPS.
Pineda’s parents divorced when he was 5 years old, so he grew up “with the Cuban side of the family” when his mother took the kids and moved back in with her parents. Pineda’s grandmother was a homemaker, while his grandfather was a shipyard worker in New Orleans.
There were no lawyers in Pineda’s family, but he was surrounded by elders who “instilled in me the importance of hard work and education,” he said. “They all wanted the American dream of a better life for me.”
“We grew up humble,” he said. “We always had food on the table, but … it’s not like we had money. But we had enough. I know we had a lot of love … so I was mindful and appreciative of it.”
One of Pineda’s most vivid memories of his late grandfather is his calloused, weathered hands, which began engaging in manual labor when his grandfather was in the third grade as a result of his father’s death. Pineda’s grandfather left school at that time to work on a farm in Cuba to help support his family.
Pineda said his grandfather used his hands as “a clever way” to encourage him to do well in school.
“Even though he had little formal education himself, as I was growing up he would inspect every report card and tell me the best present I could give him was to bring home good marks,” Pineda said. “That way I would go to university, find a good job and not have hands that looked like his.”
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Shell’s Hector Pineda discusses what he considers when hiring outside counsel, diversity and inclusion efforts that he thinks would make an impact in the legal industry and what outside counsel needs to know about him.
Pineda said he attended public school and was fortunate to have some “wonderful” teachers who helped him succeed. He did well in his school’s gifted and talented program and got into Louisiana State University, where he studied psychology.
Pineda intended to pursue a career in medicine, but during the first semester of his freshman year, his mom underwent a life-threatening bout of pancreatitis that changed his trajectory. She spent two months in the hospital.
“I had done well in school, but in college at LSU … we were having fun in that first semester,” he said. “And then my mother got sick. It was very much the traumatic type of incident where I was told I can’t remember how many times [that] ‘she’s probably not going to make it.’ She did make it, but she lost a big chunk of her pancreas.”
“I believe the medical trauma I witnessed steered me away from medicine,” he said, but it “helped to increase my focus and discipline as a student and ultimately opened opportunities for law school.”
“I had scholarship opportunities that I would not have had otherwise,” Pineda said. “If I think back, that was probably a silver lining in that tough event. I find that to be true oftentimes when you’re going through a trauma or a challenge. You’re going to learn something.”
Pineda attended law school at Tulane University. Associate Dean Robert Clayton, who recruited Pineda to Tulane, encouraged him to explore in-house clerking positions through the school’s minority clerk program — particularly since it was rare for companies to participate in clerkship programs, let alone hire first years.
Shell was one of the program’s participants, and Pineda clerked there during his 1L summer. His trajectory changed again during that experience, as he decided to pursue a career in-house after graduation instead of at a law firm.
“At the time I was interested in becoming a litigator, not really knowing what it meant,” Pineda said. “I had a Hollywood understanding of litigation. I remember ‘L.A. Law’ was a popular television series during that time, and I saw myself as the character played by Jimmy Smits. But while clerking for Shell that first summer, three things convinced me it was the place for my future: the quality of its people, the quality and diversity of its work and its work-life balance.”
Upon graduation, Pineda joined Shell. He never left.
“Best decision I ever made,” he said.
A plaintiff named Jackass
Esquivel was one of the Shell lawyers Pineda met during his clerkship, and when he joined full time, Esquivel became his first boss.
When Pineda joined Shell in 1995, he started out as legal counsel for the company’s U.S. upstream operations. Esquivel, at the time the only Hispanic associate general counsel at Shell USA, immediately took Pineda under his wing. Quickly recognizing Pineda’s willingness to step up to challenges — even higher-risk ones — and learn from them, Esquivel sent Pineda to try a case in West Texas a few months into his career.
It was a premises liability case in Fort Stockton brought by a collection truck driver named Jackass Andy. He alleged that while out in the field, he fell over the pipe of a Shell wellhead and hurt his back after a rattlesnake bit him.
“It turned out that he was also a snake wrangler,” Pineda said. “He would collect snakes over the course of the year for the Rattlesnake Roundup … a big snake fest [held in Sweetwater, Texas]. He would collect snakes and have them in a barrel drum buried in his front yard with a mesh on top. So we think he was trying to … collect a snake for the roundup when he got bit.”
The jury awarded Jackass Andy $25,000. Being a “baby lawyer,” Pineda thought the verdict was a “travesty” despite Shell’s offer during settlement talks to pay $50,000 and Andy’s lawyer refusing to settle below $250,000.
All riled up and determined to appeal, Pineda broke the news to Esquivel, who told him, “Actually, you need to take the win,” Pineda recalled.
“It was a nice lesson,” he said. “When I got back to Shell on that Monday, I had a toy snake sitting on my desk with a little sign tied around his neck that said, ‘I’ll bite you for $25,000.’ And I still have that snake to this day. It was [John’s] way of telling me that you don’t need to sweat the small stuff. Take the victory in any form it comes. And it was a really powerful lesson.”
The trial also taught Pineda that he personally preferred to “stay away from litigation.” Since that experience, most of his practice at Shell has revolved around corporate transactions, projects, and governance matters.
“My dreams and aspirations of being a trial lawyer ended pretty soon,” he said.
Not long after that trial, Shell presented Pineda with the opportunity in The Netherlands. Pineda said at first he was hesitant to take it because he wasn’t sure he had enough experience to succeed.
Learning of Pineda’s hesitancy, Esquivel pulled him aside and “assured me I could do that role successfully and needed to take it,” Pineda said.
Once convinced to say yes, Pineda traveled to Westwego to break the news to his mother and grandmother, who did not receive it well.
“Sure enough, there was a lot of drama,” Pineda said. “My grandfather, normally a very quiet man … decided to step in. With the most stern voice I ever heard from him, [he] spoke to my mother and grandmother in a tone that I can best describe as a school teacher speaking to two children who have been caught doing something wrong in class.”
Pineda said his grandfather told them,“Hector didn’t work so hard in school and at Shell to pass up an opportunity like this, so the two of you are going to fully support him, and you’re going to do that right now.”
Once their shock wore off, Pineda said, his grandmother and mother changed their tune and said of course they supported him.
“The gift he gave me that day was to go with their full support, which was very important to me,” Pineda said of his grandfather. “Unfortunately he passed away within six months of me going. It was probably within a year or two of him passing that anytime I was on a plane heading somewhere new, I would be thinking of him in that moment, and how that moment opened up so many opportunities for me.”
Pineda said it’s still a “reflex” to think of his grandfather every time he goes somewhere new or meets new people he would have never met had it not been for his success at Shell.
“So of course he’s in my mind now,” he tells me. “This meeting would have never happened had I not had the success I’ve had at Shell, and I think about him. It doesn’t make me sad anymore; I’m glad I’m doing it. I’m not trying to do it — it just happens.”
While based in The Netherlands, Pineda was part of an international team of about a dozen lawyers that provided legal support on upstream projects all over the world. Pineda’s main client was the team responsible for Shell’s Nigerian assets, so he spent about a week each month in Lagos or elsewhere in Nigeria. While abroad he also supported upstream operations in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other parts of Africa.
“It was fascinating. I had no business working on projects that were so big, but I was also kind of the young, go-getter American,” Pineda said. “I’d be willing to do anything, and it turned out to be a fantastic experience. I got so much experience early [in my career]. Nothing blew up, thank God. I learned a ton, and I think that it opened up so many doors for me down the road.”
Pineda’s career advancement began materializing as soon as he returned to Houston in 2001. Over the last two decades he’s been promoted to numerous senior legal counsel, managing counsel, head of U.S. legal and associate general counsel positions and has bounced around all kinds of departments at Shell: chemicals, corporate secretary’s office, unconventionals, downstream, marketing, sectors & decarbonization.
Today, as associate general counsel for Shell’s downstream and renewables teams in the Americas, Pineda oversees the legal department that handles that work, looking at things from a more strategic standpoint. He also advises senior Shell executives from a business standpoint.
Until recently, Pineda also served as head of legal in the U.S., in which he helped unify the culture — leadership, information sharing, employee development — across all eight of Shell’s U.S. legal departments. In that role he was also the de facto U.S. general counsel when he would represent Shell with external organizations within the country, such as trade organizations.
It’s a role he’s taken on longer than planned because he filled in for his successor who took a leave of absence for health issues, then ultimately retired.
“Volunteering was more than just stepping in for a couple days or weeks, it has been months now,” Maddock said in the nomination form. “It’s not just care for this colleague that is important to highlight, what’s equally important are some of these duties that he volunteered to take on.”
And while Pineda is known as one of Shell’s most steadfast volunteers when it comes to DEI, he hasn’t always been that way.
Becoming a ‘change agent’
Diversity and inclusion did not come front and center for Pineda until he entered the workforce. While he recalls being treated differently growing up for “being poor … I don’t recall ever being treated differently for being Hispanic,” he said.
But that changed when he began working.
During his summer clerkship as a law student, Pineda said it was normal for clerks to stay late at work since they were trying to earn job offers at the end of the summer. During one of those late nights at the office, Pineda ran into another lawyer.
“They were asking, ‘Why are you here so late?’ And I said, ‘You know, I’m working hard, trying to get a job,’” Pineda recalled. “And they said, ‘Oh don’t worry, you’re Hispanic, you’re going to get an offer. Don’t worry about it.’”
It didn’t click for Pineda in the moment, but later he interpreted the lawyer’s comment to mean that he thought Pineda would automatically get an offer because of his background, not merit.
“I honestly think he was meaning well by it, but it did impact me for a long time when I first joined Shell,” Pineda said. “It was around the time that I joined Shell that there was a big movement in the DEI space for corporate America. I would really often shy away from involving myself too deeply in these efforts because I felt like I had worked too hard in school and in the workplace for anyone to say that I had gotten there other than through my own merits, so I was ultra protective of my reputation in that way.”
Pineda said his perspective changed seven or eight years into his career when he paid more attention to the demographic makeup of his colleagues and others in the Houston legal profession.
“We were very thin on the number of Hispanics, even in my company,” he said. “I thought, ‘OK, there are too few people like me for me to not get involved somehow in the effort.”
He started to make peace with the fact that maybe there would be people who thought Pineda only was successful because of his background.
“I started to care less,” he said. “I knew that the people who knew me, were friends of mine or who have seen me work will know how I got there, and anyone else — I don’t care.”
He decided any naysayers comprised “too few people for me to not try to give back and to try to help others.”
“I then got involved much more heavily for the last two thirds of my career,” he said.
Perhaps the best example of Pineda’s volunteerism is his current role as a sponsor of the Shell US Legal DE&I Council.
Like many companies, Shell came up with a racial inclusion plan after the murder of George Floyd, and Pineda played a role in developing that. Pineda said a core component of this initiative involved developing a dashboard that shares company demographics with U.S. staff.
“In order to make any progress, you have to know what you look like even if it’s not as good as you want it to look,” Pineda said. “If you don’t actually see the numbers in enough detail, people tend to not have the impetus to really act on it.”
Although he said “there’s legal risk” and “people can make more claims” if they don’t like the numbers they see, “what we decided as a company is that risk is worth it because over time if you are making progress, then you eliminate your risk down the road.”
When it comes to mentorship, Pineda said the DE&I Council prides itself in offering two mentorship programs: the traditional mentor-help-mentee dynamic and “reverse mentoring,” where the mentee provides feedback for the mentor, in turn, mentoring them.
One particular reverse mentor experience, Pineda says, has especially helped him grow.
A few years ago, he said, someone made a reference to an animated film in front of a Black employee that exasperated a racial stereotype “of how Black people are portrayed in Hollywood historically,” Pineda said. In the moment he did not catch on to how the film could be offensive, but someone raised the issue with him later.
“I felt pretty awful about not having caught it in the moment, so I dealt with it afterwards,” he said. “I was glad someone told me about it because I got a whole new perspective on it.”
“Reverse mentoring is a great way for someone to call you out, because I don’t get it right all the time,” he said. “Unfortunately, people in society now get very angry and they jump on it, like ‘I caught you making that mistake,’ and things get ugly very quickly, which is unfortunate. I think it’s better to express grace, give people the benefit of the doubt because there are natural advocates [and] you can really turn off [their] DEI efforts by jumping on them for the slightest error.”
Outside of work, Pineda has kept himself busy with a slew of community service work that allows him to carry out diversity, equity and inclusion in broader contexts.
Pineda has served on the boards of the Texas Lyceum and the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. It resonated with him to serve on the former because it is dedicated to civil discourse among all sides of the political spectrum (“no one ever wins an argument by calling the other person stupid,” he says). And the cause of the latter resonated with him because it allows him as a Hispanic professional to give back and help increase economic prosperity among Houston’s Hispanic business community.
With Hispanics nearing 50 percent of the entire Houston population, Pineda said, “if the Hispanic community does well, the whole city does well.”
For nine years, he also served on the board — part of the time as vice chair — of Healthcare for the Homeless-Houston, a nonprofit that operates three clinics that provide critical medical services to the city’s homeless population, including standard physical care, mental health, addiction counseling, intensive case management and comprehensive dental care.
Bill Boyce, an appellate lawyer and former state appellate judge who chaired HHH’s board during Pineda’s tenure, said Pineda’s commitment to DEI emanated through his service to HHH.
“Few people are less included than homeless people. And in terms of recognizing the need to be aware of everyone in the community and assist those who need [help], Hector showed his focus on that and his ability to get that accomplished and keep everybody else focused on that goal time and time again,” said Boyce, a partner at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson.
“He’s a change agent, and that’s valuable.”