Gil Brown

Operations Manager · B2B Account Manager · Panama (EST)

Industrial engineer, thirteen years in multi-site operations and B2B account management. Most recently a 20-station territory inside a 220-site national fuel retail network — the territory numbers, the industrial fleet accounts, and the franchise operators running each site.

13+years in operations

220sites, two countries

~2,000staff trained on one rollout

EN·ES·PTworking languages

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What I do

Two things, done properly

I've spent thirteen years on the operating side of businesses where a bad process shows up straight in the numbers — fuel retail, automotive after-sales, and a services company I built from nothing. Both of these are the same muscle: find where the money leaks, and fix it without breaking what already works.

Operations & Project Management

Multi-site operations, process redesign, and rollouts that actually ship instead of dying in committee.

Working out what each site really costs to run
Standardizing how work gets done, and writing it down
Phased pilots and managing the change
Audits, compliance and safety programs
Inventory control and ERP systems

B2B Account Management

Big industrial and fleet accounts — the kind where losing one contract moves the whole territory number.

Keeping accounts when a competitor undercuts you
Contract design and credit terms
Growing the accounts you already have
Onboarding clients and running reviews
Protecting margin without discounting

Selected work

Six problems, and what I did about them

Each of these is written the way I'd walk you through it on a call: what was actually happening, what I was asked to do, and what changed. Click any one to open it.

Program rolloutGovernment interfaceTraining at scaleFinancial control

Running a national government subsidy program across a fuel retail network

50,000+ transactions a day, ~2,000 staff to train, and my sign-off standing between the field and the money.

Context: In 2023 international fuel prices spiked and the Panamanian government required every fuel company to apply a discount at the pump. They provided a mobile app: the attendant enters the plate, the app works out the discount, the customer pays less than they pumped, and the company bills the state afterward. Across the network that ran at roughly 50,000–60,000 discounted transactions a day.
My task: Make it work in the field, and make the money add up. I was the company's technical counterpart to the government agency — which meant turning their app, their screens and their settlement rules into something a station attendant could do correctly on a phone, at volume, from day one.

How one transaction moved

The company absorbed the discount up front and recovered it from the state afterward — so the daily check was the control point for the whole program.

Approach: Four things running at once. Training: ~2,000 frontline staff nationwide had to be onboarded under deadline, so I trained the operational leadership layer and equipped them to pass it down — and I wrote the what-goes-wrong guide alongside the standard process, because duplicate transactions and failed captures were what would actually break this, not the version where everything works. Daily check: reviewing and pulling out fraudulent and mistaken transactions from that 50,000+ volume. Sign-off: mine was what triggered credit notes to the stations and the bill to the state. Reporting: I built the automated daily report giving VPs national performance by product, by site, and by vehicle category — agriculture, fishing, commercial — each carrying a different discount rate.

The program ran nationally with the field trained, the fraud filtered, and what the state owed reconciled and billed every week. It's the project I'd point to if you want to know what I can carry at once.

StrategyCross-functionalMulti-countryConfidential client

Redesigning the operating model for a 220-site retail network

Seven people, two countries, and a cost picture nobody had ever seen whole.

Context: A national fuel distributor running retail networks in two countries had an operating model that had grown faster than its economics. Competitors were running four different models, and nobody inside had a like-for-like comparison of what those models actually cost.
My role: One of seven people on a cross-functional task force reporting to an executive steering committee. I covered the station-operations side alongside colleagues from finance, credit, fleet and corporate modelling.
Approach: The closest analogy is an X-ray. The cost data existed, but scattered across departments, systems and formats, with nobody able to see the whole shape at once. I put that view together: every element of how the network earned and spent, mapped end to end, then split the network into bands by how much each site sold and rebuilt the cost picture for each band.

What the X-ray showed

Cost was not spread evenly at all. That single finding redirected the pilot away from a network-wide rollout and onto the bands where the impact was concentrated.

What it unlocked: Once you can see the whole machine, you can ask better questions. The brief was explicitly to think outside the existing model, not to trim the current one. The proposals that came out of it went at the structure itself: changing how operators are invoiced, revising the operator contract terms, and changing how the network is run. Options that looked clean on a spreadsheet but broke the operation, or broke local tax and regulatory treatment, died at this stage. Two of them did.

The committee approved a hybrid operating model and a phased pilot covering legal contract redrafting, e-invoicing between the corporate system and operator billing, and a cross-functional implementation squad.

This engagement is covered by confidentiality. I can walk through the methodology and my role in depth; I don't share the client's financial figures.

Account ManagementRetentionB2B Industrial

Holding a book of industrial accounts against an aggressive price attack

Every account stayed. Four new ones came in. No price concession.

Context: Competitors moved on the territory's biggest corporate accounts with pricing we couldn't match without giving up the margin those accounts existed to produce. Several clients were openly looking at the switch.
My task: Keep the portfolio, and grow volume — without discounting into it.
Approach: I stopped treating it as a price conversation. For each account I went back to what the contract actually delivered and rebuilt it: reworked credit terms and delivery logistics, wrote custom supply agreements with volume clauses, and added live consumption monitoring so the client could see and control their own usage. That last piece was the one that mattered — it gave them something a competitor's lower price couldn't replace.

Every at-risk account stayed. Four new industrial clients came in during the same period, and territory B2B volume grew — without a price concession.

Footnote: The company had a station-level CRM, but it wasn't set up for how a territory actually works — so we exported to Excel. I built the layer on top of it: consumption history, contract terms and account health, filtered by territory and date. Colleagues on other territories started asking for it, and all nine eventually used it.

Process designDigitizationMulti-site

Rebuilding the operational audit nobody thought was broken

Nobody assigned this one. The checklist had been the job for so long that nobody was auditing the audit.

Context: Every station in my territory was inspected at least once a month — equipment, dispensing, infrastructure, customer service, inventory handling, volume against target, paperwork. The instrument was a printed checklist of over 100 questions. Nobody complained about it. It was simply what the job was.
My task: Nobody assigned this one. I looked at the checklist as a tool rather than a chore, and found it had aged badly: questions that no longer matched how we operated, questions asking the same thing twice, and questions that could no longer be answered honestly.

Before and after

I audited the audit: cut the dead questions, merged the overlapping ones, rewrote the rest against how we actually operated, then moved it off paper.

A shorter, current inspection that runs from a phone instead of a clipboard — and, for the first time, a record: scores per station over time, which checks failed most often, and which problems were network-wide rather than local.

Process designLoss preventionScaled nationally

Making a spreadsheet tell you what to do

No new technology, no budget. The same data, arranged so it meant something.

Context: Checking fuel stock against sales ran on a manual measurement typed into a spreadsheet that converted it to volume and compared it to sales. The sheet worked. The problem was that it produced numbers and left you to interpret them — so when a station manager saw a gap, he often didn't know whether it mattered or what to do, and he'd call me. The manual that should have covered it hadn't been updated since 2008.
My task: Get station managers solving these themselves, correctly, without calling anyone.

The whole change, in one line of the sheet

Conditional logic on top of the same data. The sheet stopped being a record and became a set of instructions.

Approach: I rebuilt the sheet so it would talk, and alongside it rewrote the manual from scratch — collecting what the maintenance technicians and the strongest station managers knew and had never written down.

My stations stopped calling me — they knew what to do because the sheet told them. Fuel losses improved, head office finance took the method as the national standard, and I trained the other nine territory managers plus another 20–30 staff in follow-up sessions.

Zero to oneFounder-levelB2B Sales

Standing up a B2B services company from a blank page

No entity, no accounting, no team, no clients. Twelve recurring contracts and breakeven inside six months.

Context: A commercial cleaning and hygiene services business existed as an idea and nothing else. No legal entity, no accounting, no team, no clients, no processes.
My task: Build the operation and get it to breakeven.
Approach: I set the whole thing up: registering the company with accounting and legal guidance, designing the service processes and quality standards for each site, hiring and training a supervisor plus nineteen service staff, building the pricing and quoting model, and running the reporting on revenue, cost, margin and tax. On the commercial side I sold directly — shopping centers, office buildings and schools — with fixed-price packages instead of charging by the hour.

Twelve recurring annual B2B contracts closed in the first six months, which took the company to breakeven. I later cut what our supplies cost by buying direct from manufacturers and wholesale importers and cutting out the middlemen.

Zero to oneE-commerceSolo operator

Building and running a private-label Amazon FBA business, solo

No team, no playbook, no one to hand off to — market research through Brand Registry, owned end to end.

Context: Outside my operating role, I wanted to test whether I could build and run a product business entirely on my own — no team, no corporate structure behind me, every function mine to figure out.
My task: Everything, from sourcing to storefront: pick a viable product, get it made, get it landed, get it selling, and keep it compliant.
Approach: Market and product research to find something worth building, profitability modeling before committing any capital, sourcing and negotiating directly with Alibaba suppliers, reviewing and signing the supplier contracts myself, coordinating logistics from factory into Amazon's fulfillment network, setting up Amazon Brand Registry, optimizing the listing, and monitoring sales and payouts daily.

This one's still a journey rather than a finished case study — I'd rather walk you through the decisions and what I'd do differently than hand you a number. What it confirmed: I can own a P&L end to end, with no team and no safety net, the same discipline I bring to someone else's operation.

How I work

What you'd actually get

First 30 days

I listen and measure before I change anything. Get a baseline, meet the people who actually run the work, and find out what's already been tried and failed. Opinions come after data.

Days 30–60

Quick wins that are visible and low-risk. Not because they're the biggest problems, but because they buy the credibility you need before touching anything structural.

Days 60–90

The structural change, sequenced with dependencies mapped and a pilot group. Written down so it survives after I'm not the one watching it.

Communication

Written updates by default, short and specific. If something is off track you hear it from me early, with options attached — not a surprise at the deadline.

Time zone

Panama runs on Eastern Time year-round, with no daylight-saving shift. Full overlap with US teams every day, no scheduling gymnastics.

Languages

English, Spanish and Portuguese at working level. Useful if any part of your operation, supply chain or client base touches Latin America.

Tools & systems

What I work in

Analysis & modeling

Excel at an advanced level, and my main modeling tool — pivot tables, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, Power Pivot, scenario models, VBA macros and dashboards. Google Sheets.

Reporting & dashboards

I build straightforward reports and dashboards in Power BI and Tableau. The heavy modeling I still do in Excel — that's where I'm fastest and most precise.

Operations systems

A corporate ERP fed by point-of-sale transactions across a station network, feeding a master reporting model. POS systems, a maintenance ERP, and fuel stock control.

Project management

ClickUp, Notion, Smartsheet. The concepts carry across tools — I'd be productive in Asana, Monday or Jira inside a week.

Collaboration

Google Workspace, Zoom, Google Meet, PowerPoint. Comfortable presenting to an executive committee, which is where a lot of this work ended up.

Analytical foundation

Industrial engineering degree, plus the six-course Johns Hopkins Data Science specialization. What stayed with me was the method — how to find data, clean it, question it, and turn it into something you can decide from.

Background

Where this came from

Sep 2017 — Jun 2025

Territory Manager

National fuel distribution & retail company · Panama

Ran commercial and logistics operations for a key territory: station network performance, strategic B2B accounts across industrial, commercial and transport sectors, the relationships with independent distributors, the territory numbers, and infrastructure and technology projects. Picked for the cross-functional task force that redesigned the two-country operating model.

Oct 2014 — Jan 2016

Field Operations Manager · Commercial Lead

Excel Automotriz · Panama

After-sales field operations across eleven workshops. Owned the commercial service plan, fleet client programs, parts inventory, and getting cars through the workshop faster. Acted as the link between sales, production and marketing, and led projects handed down by the regional franchise.

2012 — 2014

Planner & Operations Manager

Grupo Gileb · Panama

Project planning, budgeting and client quotes for construction projects. Ran the progress reporting, whether subcontractors were meeting their terms, contracting and payments, and the maintenance program for over fifteen completed sites.

2009 — 2012

Administrator

ProLim · Panama

Built and ran a B2B cleaning and hygiene services company end to end — legal and accounting setup, service process design, hiring and training a twenty-person team, client quotes, direct B2B sales, buying, and the full financial reporting.

Education

Industrial & Systems Engineering

Universidad Interamericana de Panamá

Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering. Plus the six-course Data Science specialization from Johns Hopkins University.

Let's find out if I'm the right fit

Tell me where your operation hurts. Fifteen minutes, and I'll give you a straight answer — including if the answer is that you need someone else.

gileban@gmail.com

LinkedIn Email Panama City, Panama · Eastern Time

Found me through Upwork? Message me there — it keeps the contract, the hours and the payments in one place.

Gil Eduardo Brown Alvarado

Ingeniero Industrial y de Sistemas · Proyectos, Costos y Contratos · Panamá

Trece años llevando proyectos de infraestructura desde el estimado de costos hasta la obra entregada, y operaciones multi-sitio en una red nacional de 220 estaciones de servicio. Sustentación económica de inversiones, especificaciones técnicas, seguimiento de contratación con proveedores y coordinación permanente con equipos multidisciplinarios.

13+años en operaciones y proyectos

220sitios en la red nacional

+15obras entregadas en construcción

ES·EN·PTidiomas de trabajo

Conversemos →

Perfil

Dónde encaja mi experiencia

Mi trabajo ha sido convertir una necesidad operativa en un proyecto viable: levantar el requerimiento técnico, costearlo, sustentar por qué conviene, contratarlo y darle seguimiento hasta que esté hecho. Abajo, cada frente con la evidencia concreta detrás.

Estimados de costos y sustentación económica

Elaboré de forma continua los reportes de pérdidas y ganancias con que se aprobaban proyectos de construcción, remodelación y arrendamiento de estaciones, anexando a cada uno el estimado de costos que yo levantaba. Reconstruí el instrumento de evaluación financiera e integré ingreso proyectado, costo de obra, costo operativo de personal y exposición del arrendamiento. Cada proyecto se sustentaba ante el Vicepresidente y el CEO con memorando técnico-económico y retorno de inversión proyectado.

Especificaciones técnicas y documentos contractuales

Definí los requisitos de equipo, distribución física e imagen de cada proyecto y los sometí a revisión conjunta de cumplimiento técnico con el Departamento de Proyectos, junto a ingenieros civiles y mecánicos. Administré la renovación de contratos anuales con seis operadores franquiciados, contratos de arrendamiento y contratos de suministro con clientes industriales.

Licitaciones y contratación con proveedores

Di seguimiento a los procesos de cotización y contratación gestionados por Compras, verificando que las ofertas cumplieran las especificaciones solicitadas y se mantuvieran dentro del presupuesto aprobado. Gestioné el contrato de transporte de valores blindados del territorio, incluyendo un rediseño por fases de la frecuencia de recolección validado estación por estación contra el límite real de cobertura de cada póliza.

Proyectos de construcción, diseño y consultoría

En Grupo Gileb entregué obra de punta a punta contra presupuesto y cronograma: más de quince sitios completados además de obra contratada, con responsabilidad sobre planificación, presupuesto, cotización a clientes, contratación de subcontratistas y gestión de pagos.

Reportes técnicos y coordinación multidisciplinaria

Dirigí un territorio de 20 estaciones dentro de una red nacional de 220, con seis operadores franquiciados, veinte administradores y entre 150 y 200 colaboradores de pista, coordinando de forma permanente con Proyectos, Compras, Finanzas, Mantenimiento, Distribución y Auditoría.

Mapas de procesos, diagramas de flujo y análisis de riesgo

Diseñé y actualicé anualmente los diagramas de circulación de peatones y vehículos y las rutas de evacuación hacia punto de reunión de cada estación, con su señalización. En la red de talleres automotrices levanté y rediseñé los mapas de proceso del recorrido del vehículo, desde recepción hasta las áreas de lavado.

Proyectos

Cinco casos, y qué hice en cada uno

Programa nacional de subsidio de combustible

El Estado obligó a aplicar un subsidio al consumidor final sobre una plataforma gubernamental. Fui la contraparte técnica de la empresa ante la entidad.

Traduje la plataforma y las reglas de liquidación en un procedimiento ejecutable en campo
Capacité en cascada a cerca de dos mil colaboradores a nivel nacional
Depuré diariamente transacciones fraudulentas y erróneas sobre un volumen de 50 a 60 mil
Fui el punto de aprobación que liberaba la liquidación nacional contra el Estado

Reconciliación de inventarios · estándar nacional

La medición existía pero no servía para decidir. La reconstruí con lógica condicional para que cada lectura indicara la acción requerida, y reescribí el manual desde cero.

Finanzas corporativa lo adoptó como estándar nacional
Capacité a los nueve jefes de zona del país
Consolidó conocimiento de técnicos y administradores nunca antes documentado

Manual de descarga y reducción de mermas

Recorrí la ruta completa de la cisterna desde la refinería para documentar el proceso, y reemplacé un manual técnico que el personal de pista no podía usar por una guía práctica de verificación.

Los indicadores de pérdida en la venta total de combustible, a nivel nacional, pasaron de aproximadamente 0.05% a 0.04%
No fue documentación: fue control interno sobre la descarga

Digitalización de la auditoría operativa

Audité la propia auditoría: depuré un instrumento en papel de más de 100 preguntas, eliminé lo inválido, consolidé lo redundante y lo convertí en formulario móvil.

Evidencia fotográfica en sitio y reporte calificado automático a cada estación
Generó un registro histórico consolidado que antes no existía
Sustituí además la cadena de aprobación en papel por un flujo digital con firma

Negocio propio de Amazon FBA, en solitario

Fuera de mi rol operativo, quise probar si podía construir y operar un negocio de producto completamente solo — sin equipo, sin estructura corporativa detrás, cada función a mi cargo.

Investigación de mercado y producto, y modelo de rentabilidad antes de comprometer capital
Sourcing y negociación directa con proveedores en Alibaba, incluyendo revisión y firma de contratos
Coordinación logística desde fábrica hasta la red de cumplimiento de Amazon
Configuración de Amazon Brand Registry, optimización del listing y monitoreo diario de ventas y pagos
Sigue siendo un proyecto en curso más que un caso cerrado — confirmó que puedo llevar un P&L de punta a punta, sin equipo y sin red de protección corporativa

Herramientas

Con qué trabajo

Microsoft Excel avanzado — modelos de escenarios, lógica condicional, tablas dinámicas y automatización. PowerPoint, Word, SharePoint y Outlook. Power BI y Tableau para construcción de reportes. ERP corporativo, ERP de mantenimiento y CRM. Especialización en Ciencia de Datos de Johns Hopkins University, seis cursos.

Trayectoria

De dónde viene esto

Territory Manager · Petróleos Delta, S.A.

sep. 2017 – jun. 2025 · Territorio de 20 estaciones dentro de una red nacional de 220.

Field Operation Manager · Excel Automotriz

oct. 2014 – ene. 2016 · Once talleres, con reporte a una franquicia regional internacional.

Planner and Operation Manager · Grupo Gileb

abr. 2012 – sep. 2014 · Construcción, diseño y consultoría. Más de quince sitios entregados.

Administrador · ProLim

oct. 2009 – abr. 2012 · Empresa de servicios construida desde cero; doce contratos recurrentes en seis meses.

Formación: Licenciatura en Ingeniería Industrial y de Sistemas, Universidad Interamericana de Panamá, 2012. Idoneidad profesional en trámite ante la Junta Técnica de Ingeniería y Arquitectura.
Reconocimiento: Colaborador del Año 2018 por el método de reconciliación de inventarios adoptado como estándar nacional; nominado además en 2021, 2023 y 2024.

Conversemos

Cuénteme qué necesita resolver. Quince minutos y le doy una respuesta directa, incluso si la respuesta es que necesita a otra persona.

gileban@gmail.com

LinkedIn Correo Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá · 6361-7802