Christina Pimenta – Circle K

Before Christina Pimenta ever set foot on a construction site, she was arguing cases in a Massachusetts courtroom. A political science graduate of UMass Amherst who earned her JD from New England Law Boston, Pimenta spent roughly six years as a litigation attorney before a pivot into real estate law opened a door she hadn’t anticipated. That transition eventually led her to a real estate coordinator role at McDonald’s, where she spent nearly 9 years working her way up through the organization and gaining a deep, granular understanding of site strategy and development at scale. A stint at 7-Eleven followed, where she joined as a construction manager and was promoted to zone construction manager before Circle K came calling in July 2022.

Today, Pimenta serves as Head of Construction for North America at Circle K, overseeing the company’s physical expansion across the United States and Canada. Her portfolio spans 7,000 to 8,000 locations, and her team of roughly 50 professionals — experts in construction management and entitlements — is responsible for managing every phase of a project from the moment a site receives approval through the day a store opens its doors to the public. It is a scope that demands both strategic vision and operational precision, and Pimenta has spent the past 2.5 years refining both.

A footprint built on purpose

Circle K’s parent company, Alimentation Couche-Tard, is a leader in the Canadian convenience store industry. Together under the Circle K banner, the business operates more than 14,200 stores in 26 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, united by a mission to make customers’ lives a little easier every day.

That mission has direct implications for Pimenta’s work. Growth is not simply a business objective — it is a commitment to the communities Circle K serves. With strategic site selection at the heart of the expansion strategy, Pimenta and her team focus on placing new locations where customers need them most, ensuring that each store adds genuine value to the neighborhoods it enters. The decision of where to build is never arbitrary; it is guided by data, local market knowledge, and a consistent focus on accessibility.

“We are on pace to deliver over 100 new sites for this fiscal year,” Pimenta says, underscoring the momentum behind the company’s current growth trajectory.

The company has set an ambitious long-term target: 500 new stores over the next five years. Last year marked a meaningful milestone, as Circle K hit its expansion goal for the first time since going international. This year, the team is tracking toward that same benchmark again — a consecutive achievement that reflects both the discipline of Pimenta’s construction operation and the company’s broader commitment to sustainable growth.

Faster stores, better results

Speed matters in construction, and Pimenta has made reducing build timelines a defining focus of her tenure. By forging strong relationships with the right contractors and streamlining internal processes, her team has worked to shrink the gap between site approval and ribbon-cutting. The result is meaningful: faster turnaround means communities gain access to new Circle K locations sooner, and the company can reinvest resources into its next wave of development.

This operational focus on efficiency dovetails naturally with the customer-centric philosophy that guides Circle K’s strategy. Every week shaved off a construction schedule is a week sooner that a store serves its neighborhood, stocks its shelves, and fulfills the quiet but important role that convenience retail plays in daily life.

“Aaron hired me for a very specific reason — to help us grow and expand and hit our growth goals,” Pimenta says of the mandate she was brought in to fulfill.

She has taken that charge seriously. The construction team does not simply build stores; it serves as an engine of accessibility, ensuring that Circle K’s footprint expands in ways that are responsive, deliberate, and built to last. Partnering with the right contractors from the outset has proven essential to this approach, reducing the friction that can slow projects and compromise quality. The results show: consecutive years of hitting growth targets do not happen without a construction operation that performs at a consistently high level.

Developing the team behind the build

When Pimenta arrived at Circle K in 2022, the construction department operated with a relatively flat organizational structure. The team had construction managers and directors, but offered limited room for employees to chart a meaningful upward path within the organization. Pimenta recognized that the company’s long-term growth ambitions required not just operational excellence, but a team architecture capable of sustaining it over time.

She introduced senior-level roles designed to give construction professionals a clear and compelling development trajectory — a structure that signals to employees that Circle K is a place to build a career, not just fill a position.

“Personally, I want to make this a place where the team is happy to have me, happy to be here and coming to work all day,” she says, articulating a leadership philosophy rooted as much in culture as in output.

That approach to people investment is not incidental to Circle K’s broader workplace culture. The company has earned Gallup’s Exceptional Workplace recognition for three consecutive years, an acknowledgment that its commitment to employee engagement is not merely aspirational. Pimenta’s structural changes within the construction department reflect that same ethos — the conviction that a high-performing, fulfilled team produces better work, and better work ultimately produces better stores. Happy employees and high-quality locations, in her view, are not separate outcomes. They are the same outcome, expressed differently.

The person behind the projects

Circle K’s “Growing Together” vision resonates personally for Pimenta, who has built her own career through a series of deliberate pivots and persistent development. From litigation to real estate to construction leadership at one of the world’s largest convenience retailers, her path reflects an adaptability that has served her well in a role that demands constant problem-solving across a vast and varied geography.

Away from the office, Pimenta lives in the Carolinas and describes herself first and foremost as a mom. Her time outside work revolves around family — soccer games, travel, and the kind of grounding that comes from investing in the people closest to her.

“Making sure we are available to our customers, building in the right locations — that’s what this is all about,” she says.

It is a clear-eyed answer, and in many ways that clarity defines Pimenta’s approach to her role. Whether she is evaluating a new site, restructuring her team, or pushing a project across the finish line, the throughline is consistent: build well, build strategically, and make it count for the people waiting on the other side of the door.