About

With her most recent appointment as legal manager for institutional relations and social responsibility at Claro (Colombia), in November 2013, ‘dynamic attorney’ Sandra Monroy has taken a further step in an impressive in-house career increasingly focused upon the telecommunications sector. While she also has extensive experience of the oil and gas industry (at Gas Natural, 2002-5, and Organización Terpel, 2008-10), on the telecoms side she has experience of a regional public utility, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bucaramanga (ETB); at the national telecoms authority, the Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC); and at the Colombian subsidiary of TV Azteca (part of Mexico’s Grupo Salinas). As such she has huge experience not just in building legal departments from the ground up, or renovating them for greater efficiency, but also of a number of unique and high-profile experiences. Arriving at ETB in 2005, just as the company was plunged into the Cocaribe brokerage scandal, she found herself not only with the responsibility of coordinating all the required legal measures, but also with a reputational crisis that saw the business haemorrhaging clients. Her actions would result in the liquidation of Cocaribe and, acting as president of the liquidator’s advisory council, she ensured that ETB retrieved over 75% of its losses. In a distinct matter, and one she regards as probably the achievement of her career to date, she occupied the post of director of legal and regulatory affairs at TV Azteca during its installation of 18,000kms of fibre optic cable, “the backbone of the National Fibre Optic Plan”; required to reach 788 municipalities and 800 public institutions, and with overrun fines of $350,000 per day, she oversaw the successfully completion of the project within its two year time frame. One admirer comments: ‘her work is characterised by her focus on achieving objectives established at the organizational level’. With ‘outstanding knowledge of the international telecommunications industry and a strong ability to establish inter-institutional relations, creating opportunities for constructive dialogue with the government, suppliers and competitors (which all facilitates entrance into the market)’, it is little surprise that her most recent role has an institutional relations aspect. Monroy herself notes that ‘when one works with knowledge, a strategy and passion, the positive impact that the post of general counsel can generate for a companies is huge. To originate innovative solutions in a field that does not traditionally think about the need to provide creative answers, nor about the importance of adding value, is hugely satisfying’. She adds: ‘I think that as an in-house general counsel, it’s impossible to have knowledge of all the matters required to manage a business successfully; the important thing, therefore, is not to forget to develop relations, to maintain standards and to manage the internal and external resources available so as to obtain the ends proposed; and to view every consultation from a legal-strategic perspective’. Since publication, Ms Monroy has moved to Level 3 Communications as Legal & Compliance Director Northern & Andean Clusters.