During the 2023 Wharton Latin American Conference (WHALAC), Patricia Pomies, Global COO of Globant, spoke during a session titled, “Becoming a global tech giant: The opportunities and challenges of reaching the next level of scale” with Alejandro Sufdie, a Wharton MBA/MA candidate, as the interviewer.

Globant is a software development and IT company that was started in 2003 by four friends in a bar. Now it boasts around 27,000 employees across 32 countries. 

“That is the kind of scale that you can recall in the last couple of years, so just remember that in 2018 we were 10,000 people and two years later, over 20,000 people. So that is the kind of [growth] in this industry. This is an opportunity for everyone to transform in the digital space and partner with clients,” said Pomies, who has worked with the company for 8 years. 

As an example of what her company doesn’t do, Pomies showed one of their recent ads, which depicts employees at a consulting firm hyping up a co-worker who’s creating a thousand page slideshow for a client. 

She stated that the difference between Globant and other consulting firms is that “we have this entrepreneurial mindset. And we’re doing this 360 journey with a client; it's not only consulting, it's also understanding the business, transforming the business, developing the correct technology and use of technologies.”

Pomies described Globant as “the company that’s behind a lot of other companies.”

The company currently has over 1,200 active clients. Last year, it brought in $1.8 billion in annual revenue with 37.3% year-over-year growth. 

One of its biggest clients is Disney. Globant helped create the electronic wristbands used at the parks. It also helped develop the FIFA game. Globant was the first service company to sponsor FIFA. 

Shifting away from clients and technology, Pomies discussed how the business operates on an employee level. The company is set up so that it is easy for employees to switch between topics to work on, and even jobs. 

Globant currently has 22,000 employees completing courses from Auburn University — the same one they often recruit from — to make these job switches. 

“That is called open career. So you have the opportunity to choose your own projects internally. And that is a very great way of keeping the talent enthusiastic,” said Pomies. 

When asked about challenges associated with having so many teams in different places, she replied that it actually helped them when COVID broke out.

“So we put everyone in 48 hours working from their home and we didn’t lose one day of opportunity; in fact, opportunities kept getting higher and higher. And that was because the framework and culture inside Globant was set in order to work in distributed teams.”

The Be Kind Initiative

Pomies is one of the creators of Globant’s Be Kind initiative. The initiative’s goal is “to build a more balanced and fair future together.” 

The three pillars of this initiative are built on the concept of kindness:

• “Be kind to the planet, by reducing and compensating the impact of their actions in the environment.”
• “Be kind to peers, by promoting diversity, gender equality, and connecting IT opportunities with underprivileged peoples where they operate.”
• “Be kind to humanity, by working with their customers to create accessible software for everyone.”

In addition to her work at Globant, Pomies works as a board member of Digital House and is a member of Young Presidents Organization.

Pomies holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Science from the University of Buenos Aires. She also received a Wharton Executive Education in Business Administration and Management. 

She has been recognized as one of the Top 50 COOs by the OnCon Icon Awards in 2022 and was selected as one of the Outstanding Women in the Business Field by Women Corporate in 2020.