The Stratam Group: Latin America
Luis A. Sota, Managing Director, founder and Executive President of STRATAM Latin America, based in Santiago, Chile, has 25 years’ experience as an international consultant specializing in results-oriented innovation and organizational change. He has led projects in the US, Canada, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, France, Ireland, Great Britain, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Peru and Chile. During the 80’s he was part of the team that developed the original Commitment-based Management (CbM) approach in Berkeley, California.
Luis' clients have included Ontario Hydro, AMP of Canada (now part of Tyco Electronics), Johnson & Johnson, The Audobon Society, ABB, Cemex, Cydsa, Elektra, ATT, Santander, Deutsche Bank, ENDESA, Telefonica, Agip, IBM, Inter-American Development Bank, Aramark, Copihue, VTR (Liberty Media), Salcobrand, Codelco, Sodimac, Voight Siemens Brazil, NutraSweet, ABC-DIN, Aramark, and Nexans.
During his work with Cemex he carried out programs that reinvented the ReadyMix business as well as other projects that dramatically expanded the construction materials market for low income consumers in emerging economies. These projects have become case studies at MBA programs and have been quoted in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, by C.K. Prahalad, and Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.
For Cencosud, one of the three big retailers in Latin America, Luis has led projects focusing on client services, logistics and operational efficiency which translated into impressive short and medium term results.
For a subsidiary of ENDESA, Ampla, the electric power distribution company in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he led a project aimed at cutting losses due to massive non-payment of electricity bills at the favelas. The Project modified the company’s strategy with low income segments and tested a pilot for a new service and payment model. The following year, the company obtained positive results for the first time since its privatization in the 90’s.
At BBosch, a leading metallurgic and steel galvanizing company with operations in Chile and Brazil, Luis led a cultural change and commercial and industrial redesign project, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction substantially with a multiplying effect on operational results.
And for BHP Billiton, he created a pioneer project to build up the Chilean mining cluster which included preparing mining organizations to open their doors to innovative external solutions as well as preparing a growing number of local providers to make world-class offers. The program has been replicated by Codelco and other international mining companies.
Luis has passionately pursued his education in the fields of cognition, communication and learning, which has also translated into an interest for teaching. He directed a pioneer virtual learning program in the 80s, “Management in Action” by Logonet, a San Francisco, California based company that combined the use of computer networks and face-to-face classroom conferences to train students in the US. He currently teaches the course “Management in the XXI Century: Keys to Build Passionate Companies” which is part of the e-class program at the Business School of the Adolfo Ibáñez University.
In addition to his professional experience, Luis also brings to the job a multicultural experience and his command of four languages, Spanish, English, Portuguese and French. Luis studied engineering at Universidad de Chile and has a Licence and a Maîtrise d'Économie Appliquée from Université de Paris IX. For 16 years he worked with Fernando Flores the originator of Commitment-based Management. Luis currently lives in Santiago with his wife and youngest son. His two elder sons live abroad, one of them in San Luis Obispo, CA and the other one in Berkeley, CA.
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Guido Pierattini, Project Management Director at STRATAM Latin America, is responsible for the design and quality of our client programs. He is an expert at CbM business processes redesign and in mobilizing organizational change to ensure business results.
Guido makes sure our projects deliver on their promises. He is known for his relentless pursuit of high performance standards and a remarkable ability to tackle a project's challenges by organizing them into sets of highly coordinated, attainable, individual commitments. Our clients appreciate that he anticipates their challenges, designs new solutions on the spot, and manages and unambiguously reports progress against the master plan.
He has led large scale projects which have translated into breakthrough in supply chain productivity and enhanced client service effectiveness for companies in Chile and Brazil including: Paris, Jumbo, Cruz Verde, Farmacias Ahumada, SalcoBrand, Adelco, BBosch, Montserrat, Unimarc and Pre Unic.
For Paris, Chile’s second largest department store chain, Guido led a business processes redesign program which substantially improved the company’s logistics capabilities, including new productivity standards at the Distribution Center, a daily fill rate to stores above 99.0% and client satisfaction with home deliveries at a record level of 99.9%. For JUMBO, Chile's most profitable supermarket chain, he led an innovation project aimed at client service and efficiency, with results that have amazed our client’s clients.
In 2005 Chile's Engineering Institute awarded him with the “Ismael Valdés Valdés” award, a yearly recognition to the best graduates from the most prestigious engineering schools in Chile. Guido has a degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Chile, where he currently teaches the “Project Workshop” program. Before joining STRATAM, Guido worked as project and innovation manager for drugstore channels with Procter & Gamble in Chile.
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María Loreto Vergara, Coaching Director for STRATAM Latin America has 15 years’ experience in linguistic and body-centered coaching. She designs and leads our Effective Communication coaching projects with owners, CEO’s and executives.
Loreto works with her clients to inspire their teams to undertake and succeed at missions that previously seemed impossible. She is known for her quick and accurate diagnoses and her ability to generate immediate empathy with top executives. Loreto’s coaching offers leaders an opportunity to reinterpret their possibilities and translate them into concrete solutions through better listening, greater sensitivity to new possibilities, skillful conflict resolution and commitment-based coordination.
Loreto has worked with companies in Chile, Peru, Colombia and Brazil including Telefónica, Equilab, Chilectra, Ampla, Coelce, Codensa, Fusat, Fundes Andes, NEC, VTR, BBosch, Paris , Pernod Ricard and Kaufmann Mercedes-Benz Chile. In addition to her work with clients, Loreto is also responsible for selecting new consultants and for STRATAM Latin America’s programs to train new coaches, consultants, mobilizers and leaders.
Loreto has been a pioneer in applying an integrated version of the “interactional-systemic-strategic” approach developed by the Mental Research Institute (MRI) of Palo Alto, CA, and the ICC’s Cognitive Corporal method created by biologist Carmen Cordero, a leading figure in the Chilean School of Biology of Cognition. She studied literature, linguistics and psychology and obtained her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Concepción, Chile. Loreto lives in Santiago, Chile, with her husband and son.
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© 2007 The Stratam Group