About

‘An excellent manager of both projects and people’, award-winning corporate counsel Chris Garza has often been thrown in at the deep end. A former litigator, one of this first tasks at his first in-house role at CITGO Petroleum was running a million-dollar construction project. With no previous experience in the field it was, he says, a ‘rude awakening’. ‘It was a huge transition from litigation to commercial,’ he adds. ‘It was on the job training. Now I’m sometimes doing some of the teaching’. Garza moved to Cosentino and reached GC level relatively early in his career in 2013. Making this step up, alongside the strong international dimension to Cosentino’s business, he says ‘was an offer to good to pass up’. As well as moving into an entirely new industry, Garza was also only the company’s second general counsel, and the first to be based in Houston, so he had to build a small local team from scratch. ‘Being a GC is much more business focused,’ he says. ‘The company really encourages teamwork and as a part of the executive team I provide a legal and a business perspective’. When it comes to law firms, Garza says ‘responsiveness’ is key. ‘We’re a very dynamic, fast-moving company. Quick responses within the day is number one and with it an understanding of our sense of urgency’.