About

Alejandra Bogantes joined the Costa Rican arm of American multinational retail corporation Walmart in September 2009, as a regional lawyer of agro-industrial development, and assumed her current position as legal manager for Costa Rica in 2014. Bogantes was appointed in this position at just 33 years old, at a time when the legal department was mostly made up of women, showing Walmart’s commitment to promoting women in executive positions. Despite this, Bogantes explains: ‘It was a challenge to prove that I have what it takes to assume the title even at my age and my gender’, adding, ‘thankfully, even if it was a challenge, all turned out good. I learned how to be a business partner, have strategic thinking, [and take] quick decisions to avoid risk’. Most importantly, Bogantes learned how to summarise or simplify problems in order to take actions and solve ranges of problems effectively and swiftly. ‘This helped me with the changes in the legal department that we have been through, I learnt how to accept the changes and make them into opportunities,’ Bogantes says. She explains that being a legal manager for Walmart in Costa Rica has proved to be a great opportunity, leading a small team comprised of herself, a lawyer and a paralegal has created an environment where they are always learning from each other. The clients she deals with on a daily basis comprise of a variety of units including HR, logistics, operations, finances, tax, compliance, the expats and their families and many others, giving her a varied breadth of legal issues to deal with. ‘We live in a country where the authorities are very active [in] visiting the stores and [checking] the workers are educated in their rights. We have no chances for mistakes, because one of them can cause greater losses to the company’, says Bogantes, who has successfully stayed abreast by using utmost attention to detail combined with speed and efficiency. Before joining Walmart she served as an associate attorney at KPMG where she focused on corporate law, dissolutions, management of corporations, with an emphasis on the incorporation of businesses in Costa Rica.