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Julio is a Senior Advisor
and Partner, has over 30 years of higher management, business development and
consulting experience in multinational companies, small and medium size
companies and quasi-government organizations covering 14 countries in the Americas. He has lived and worked in
the US, the Caribbean, Central America, Costa Rica and Chile, accumulating
experience in categories such as office equipment and supplies, industrial
equipment, furniture, construction wood products, apparel, food and beverages,
personal care, insurance, retail, and business consulting in strategy,
marketing and sales. During the last 6 years, he has specialized in management
consulting, establishment of foreign operations, and Foreign Direct Investment,
working as Managing Director of CINDE, helping several foreign companies
establish physical operations in Costa Rica, and assisting Industrial
parks, Free Zones and other Investment Promotion Agencies.
He
graduated in International Commerce from LSU, Louisiana (1973), is the Vice
President of the Board of the largest Drugstore Chain in Costa Rica, and is fluent in
Spanish and English.
Julio currently advises several companies on business
development projects. As part of this, he has been involved in several projects
with America Free Zone, including growth plans and attracting investing
companies with great success, as the park has grown from two tenants to
ten. He is part of the advisory team of
PROCOMER, the Export Promotion entity in Costa Rica, to help SMEs with their
internationalization strategies and plans.
For 2 months and a half, he was stationed in Baghdad as Foreign Investment
Advisor to design and implement the country’s Investment Promotion Strategy
under a USAID-financed initiative. He was pulled out due to increased violence
in Iraq.
He currently sits in several Boards of Directors, and
is the Vice President of the Board of the number one Drugstore Chain in Costa Rica.
As Managing Director of CINDE he placed special
emphasis on Research, Investment and the Re-Organization of this autonomous
agency. He was directly involved in
several FDI inward and outward missions, prospect presentation trips, site
visits and negotiations, fourteen trips to different regions of the continental
U.S. Contributed to the agency’s results with measurable strengths in business
development. More specifically:
- During his tenure, a new office was opened in Silicon Valley in order to cover the
western portion of the United States, to have an executive at
less than a day travel from any prospect in the country. He also ran a study
with other governmental institutions to open another office in Europe in order to attract
European Community investment projects.
- He helped and established the office to promote the development of B.O.T
(build operate and transfer) for the country’s infrastructure projects, such as
highways, ports, etc. By his initiative CINDE started a post-establishment
department in charge of facilitating relations between the government and the
investors.
- He accompanied and helped organize four trips with the President of
Costa Rica: Washington D.C., Chicago, Chile and Europe. He also helped organize and accompanied the
Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica on two occasions with JETRO to New York and Japan. Also through JETRO he was
an invited guest speaker at forums in Dominican Republic and Panama.
- As the Managing Director of CINDE he was a member of the board of the
program ¨Costa Rica Provee¨ Costa Rican Local Industry Upgrade (LIU) Program
financed by IADB and private institutions.
- He was also in charge of transferring the different IT programs in use
by CINDE to a Domino Doc. Platform.
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Finally, he was in charge of
restructuring CINDE, so it can function with a reduction of 33% of its
budget, since by contract our main donor was cutting $700.000.00 for fiscal
year 2001.
He has also been:
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Developed a Master Plan for a Free Zone in the Port of Limon (a lesser
developed area in Costa Rica). The Master Plan was developed and the project
was executed to the permits phase, however, it was not continued because the
investors were unable to obtain financing.
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