VANESA COTLAR, MBA - VP PEOPLE & CULTURE, POLICYME

Vanesa Cotlar is a visionary global people and culture leader dedicated to transforming organizations into high-performing, people-centered workplaces. With experience spanning 15+ countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America, Vanesa combines strategic insight, operational expertise, and a people-first approach to help organizations thrive in complex, rapidly changing environments.

Currently serving as VP of People & Culture at PolicyMe, Vanesa works at the intersection of strategy and execution, partnering with senior leadership and boards to operationalize people priorities into measurable business outcomes. She specializes in building engaged, high-impact teams, leveraging people analytics, and designing organizational systems that drive performance, clarity, and adaptability. Her leadership philosophy emphasizes genuine connection, inclusivity, and empowering leaders to unlock the potential of their teams.

Vanesa’s career journey reflects a blend of consulting, entrepreneurship, and executive leadership. She began as a management consultant at Deloitte, developing expertise in organizational change management, business transformation, and process redesign. She later founded and served as CEO of a tech start-up, where she was shortlisted for the Business Leader of the Year – Women in IT Awards (2019), gaining firsthand experience in building scalable, people-centered organizations. This combination of consulting rigor and entrepreneurial agility informs her holistic approach to people strategy and culture design.

Fluent in Spanish and English, Vanesa brings a multicultural perspective to every organization she works with, helping navigate complexity, foster alignment, and drive impact across global teams. Her specialties include talent strategy, organizational change, stakeholder engagement, executive communication, business model innovation, and employee experience transformation. Beyond her operational and strategic work, she is a mentor, public speaker, and workshop facilitator, inspiring leaders to embrace people-first leadership and cultivate cultures where both individuals and businesses flourish.

Through her work, Vanesa Cotlar continues to enable organizations to turn complexity into clarity, strategy into action, and talent into transformative impact, creating workplaces that are not only effective but also empowering, inclusive, and purpose-driven.