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lawyer who has to ask questions to read a financial statement.” Cestero recalls his introduction to


the company vividly. His tenure as senior vice president, general counsel, corporate secretary, and chief com- pliance office at Seahawk Drilling, Inc., in Houston had recently ended when he learned that Lufkin’s former general counsel had retired and the company was doing a national search for a candidate with an international, transactional, and oilfield background. Te candidate needed to bridge the gap between international state-of-the-art public company issues in the energy space while at the same time being able to work with local issues in a town of 35,000 people in East Texas. Cestero was intrigued and had a local connec- tion, through his wife, who was the daughter of a timber company executive in a small town down the road. He felt he was an ideal fit, and Lufkin agreed. Born in Puerto Rico and raised


primarily in Miami, Cestero is also the only Hispanic and native Spanish speaker on Lufkin’s management team. In today’s global economy, he says, it benefits to be conversant in different languages and various cultures. Growing up, Cestero was urged by his father to speak Spanish at home—not to advance his career 20 years down the road but to keep the first-generation American family’s Latin culture alive. “I’m not limited


by just one experience, and that makes me more valuable to my employer. “Tere are several people in our


corporate office who don’t have a pass- port. Tat’s how localized a part of the work is at Lufkin,” he adds. “On the other hand, I’ve recently hired lawyers from Romania with French and U.S. law degrees and the Cayman Islands with a U.K. law degree. Our increasingly international industry demands it. It’s invaluable. It helps to have people who’ve been exposed to different cultures. Tey’re better able to plug in and out of situations.” Cestero initially became acquainted


with Texas when he attended Houston’s Rice University (first graduating with a B.A. and later as a deputy general counsel with an international drill- ing contractor returning to earn an M.B.A. while working). “For me, being in Lufkin brings together small-town quality of life with big-company issues and growing company complexities, and for my wife who grew up in nearby (and smaller) Diboll, Texas, living in Lufkin is a bit of a homecoming. It’s a good place to bring up our three young sons.” Cestero went in-house early in his


It helps to have people who have been exposed to different cultures. They’re better able to plug in and out of situations.


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career. After just three years in private practice, he left Bracewell & Giuliani’s Houston office to work for a client, Pride International, Inc. A Houston-based drilling and oil company, Pride was looking for a Spanish-speaking attorney to cover Latin America for them and also be a corporate general- ist. “Tough I was a little inexperienced for the position, the firm encouraged me to go for it, assuring me that if it didn’t work out I had the safety net of return- ing to Bracewell and stay on a partnership type track.” Once in-house, he


never looked back. “Without knowing what to expect, I found that I love getting into the pre-project stage


and following it through to the end. I love being able to touch so many areas of the law in a single day.” Despite his parents being creative


types (his father was an actor who appeared on American TV and starred in evening soap operas in Latin America, and his mother is a successful advertising executive), Cestero felt a draw toward the law. As a teenager he spent a lot of time in his uncle’s two-man Miami law firm and also worked for a criminal court judge his senior year in high school. Among Puerto Ricans, says Cestero,


he is sort of an anomaly. “I’m Protestant, and though liberal on some social issues, basically conservative. People some- times have preconceived notions about Hispanics. And while it can feel strange to me, it’s not been a big problem.” While attending Stanford University School of Law in Northern California, Cestero—a little to his surprise—was elected co-President of the Stanford Latino Law Student Association. And though he didn’t agree with all of the members’ more liberal thinking, he grew to understand and respect what shaped their beliefs. Te future is decidedly rosy for


Cestero. In many ways, he represents what’s new in the energy industry: multicultural, global, and industri- ous. Not yet in his 40s, Cestero has been advised by older mentors not to pigeonhole himself. Tey say he is in a position to try different things. Whether Cestero will ultimately be more on the business or the law side of the energy industry, he is undecided. For now, Cestero is focused


on growth and change at Lufkin Industries. With 2,000+ employees in Texas and another 2,000 working throughout the world, Cestero compares Lufkin to what Walmart was early on, during the company’s burgeoning days in Bentonville, Ark. “It’s an incredibly exciting time to be here,” he adds. D&B


Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 DIVERSITY & THE BAR®


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