Features Region: South America

In 2013, in a rural mountain village in northern Peru, a tanker truck carrying oil tipped over while trying to navigate a rough patch of road. Spilling 9,000 gallons of oil across the surrounding landscape, the accident tainted the soil and destroyed the crops of 30 local farms. What could have been a public relations […]

Everyone loves a good story about making an impossible situation possible—but no one more so than Iván Diego Durontó of AES Argentina. With only a month to complete a monstrous financial task—the likes of which the Buenos Aires-based energy company had never before completed—Durontó and his team actively collaborated with an AES Argentina multidisciplinary team […]

There were just three steps to the relentless business expansion underway at Megalabs in Latin America. Companies are vetted (1), purchased (2) and integrated (3). There may be other steps, too, but overall it’s a simple idea—hardly the first of its kind. It stands out at Megalabs only because of its swift execution. In the […]

When Gloria Loza Murrugarra arrives at Peru’s Jorge Chávez International Airport, she’s fully prepared to stand at the security checkpoint for at least two hours. Only, the wait isn’t due to the usual holdups—having to unlace her shoes, removing her laptop, having to walk through the metal detector five times. Rather, Loza is here by […]

In a way, Sofia Almeida Montero’s career started with a lie—however white and well-intentioned. When she was 18, Almeida arrived at what would be her “alma mater” to take what she thought was a pre-university political science test. After notching one of the highest scores in her class, Almeida soon discovered she’d instead been enrolled […]

The legal department might have run like clockwork when, at just 32, Sofia Zuloaga joined the South American arm of professional services giant Aon, the first woman to manage the legal functions of a subregion that includes Argentina, Chile and Peru. But Zuloaga wanted the department to be about more than just cold efficiency. For […]

When you think of happy, carefree professionals, lawyers might be the last people who come to mind. Spend any time in Jose Pedro Urrutia’s legal department, however, and you’ll quickly realize it is possible for lawyers to love what they do—and where they work. He’s even found a word for his approach, inspired by a […]

The trademark of a successful corporate lawyer? It’s not just legal and business savvy, answers Carlos Landazabal Angeli, who, since November 2012, has served as General Electric’s legal leader for South America’s Andean region, as well as Central America and the Caribbean. Anticipation is just as important, the soft-spoken general counsel tells Vanguard from his […]

It’s a long stretch from his office in Santiago, Chile, to Quito, Ecuador–over 2,350 miles to the north. But Ricardo Muza, legal director of Pfizer’s Andean Region for the past seven years, has a way of finding common ground between the operations of those far-apart locations as well as in the other three countries in […]

Even for a kindergartner, the task was whimsical: use the boxes of costumes to dress up for your future job. While her classmates reluctantly rummaged through the various wares, blending careers like watercolor paints, Gabriela Bogantes went straight for the briefcase and necktie. Her teacher didn’t even bother to ask. “I always knew I wanted […]