About

Thomas Gottschlich worked in various law firms in Washington, DC before arriving in Santiago, Chile in 2013, where he worked at Grasty Quintana Majlis y Cía before starting at Carey y Cía, where he was seconded to Crystal Lagoons as a senior legal advisor. He then assumed his current role as legal director at Crystal Lagoons in March 2018, making the move in-house, and currently oversees all legal issues for the company, covering projects on five continents and dozens of countries. Given the company’s disruptive technology, there are not provisions in most jurisdictions to adequately regulate lagoons with Crystal Lagoons’ technology. Gottschlich works with regulators and legislators, including recently in Texas, to pass laws creating a new designation in the health and safety code for the company’s artificial swimming lagoons. He is currently drafting regulations as well as working on regulatory approval in other states and jurisdictions. Gottschlich negotiated and executed the first contract in in Africa, leading to the first project with Crystal Lagoons’ technology in South Africa and opening up an entire continent to development. He also negotiated the first “public access” lagoon model for a project in Miami, Florida and Phuket, Thailand. He has been instrumental in opening the US market, acting as lead negotiator for all deals in the region, and assisting to deploy a “public access” model in the region and worldwide. He identifies that he ‘has attempted to streamline the decision-making process within the legal department, empowering those below me to make decisions and then work with them on finding the best solution for the company. [And he has] attempted to foster a sense that “the company is the client”, rather than an extension of the rest of the departments, which [he] believes improves the counsel and services’ offered.