Resumen en español

The following exploratory study illustrates the particular characteristics of a group of Colombian executives, since according to previous research, Colombia has been pointed out as the country with the highest percentage of women in upper management positions. The main purpose was to examine country, institutional and individual level variables that would enable us to describe a sample of executives and thus shed light on what makes our women executives’ particular. An exploratory study, qualitative (29 semi-structured interviews) and quantitative (69 electronic surveys) was carried out to describe the professional trajectory of this sample of Colombian women from the first, second and third organizational level. Results show that the women exerting a first level position had studied in an all girls school, were mainly engineers, lawyers and business majors, had carried out graduate studies, mainly at the master’s level, were married or had been married, had children and mentioned that household help had contributed to their career. Most of them had reached upper management positions through the financial or commercial track and had managed to climb the ladder due to their outstanding performance and their personality traits.