From IESE to the world

Jaume Armengou coordinates the Global Alumni Meeting, which brings together two thousand alumni of the prestigious business school in Barcelona

Jaume Armengou, general secretary of IESE and full academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), coordinated the Global Alumni Meeting of the prestigious Catalan business school, which was held between the past 14 and 16 November in the Congress Palace of Barcelona. The event brought together two thousand managers trained in the center and served to explore a new vision of the future of business, with a powerful academic program that was accompanied by visits to companies, learning with high-level speakers and a solidarity event for the benefit of the IESE Scholarship Program. Those who couldn’t attend in person were also able to follow the event thanks to live streaming. “We have more than 50,000 alumni living and working in more than one hundred countries, an indication of how much IESE has changed in the last 60 years. Today we are a truly global school and the Global Alumni Meeting has evolved over the years in the same address”, said Javier Muñoz, director of the IESE Alumni Association.

Dr. Jaume Armengou, Secretary General of the IESE Board of Directors

The program of the event highlighted the visits to leading companies such as Tesla, Amazon, Mango and FC Barcelona. In addition, within the framework of Entrepreneurship Day, participants visited places that are part of the dynamic entrepreneurial scene of the city: Barcelona Tech City, which works with the local and global technological ecosystem; Barcelona Activa, a City Council service that supports entrepreneurs; and Barcelona Health Hub, which promotes innovation in digital health and its transfer to the health sector. “We want to show not only what we are doing at IESE, but also in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Barcelona”, said Eddy Zakes, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the school.

Participants visited the Venture Hub, the new IESE space that brings together all the school’s entrepreneurial activities under one roof. The day ended with two evening conferences. In the first, “Managing Emerging Technologies”, Luis Manent, from Wide Eyes Technologies; Aleix Martí, from the National Supercomputing Center of Barcelona; Pilar Troncoso, of Aerao Technologies, and Ignasi Vilajosana, of Worldsensing, spoke. In the second conference, focused on impact start-ups, Emiliano Kargieman of Satellogic; Mohamad Khacha, of the BMB group; Emre Fadillioglu, of App Samurai, and Gemma Sorigué, of Deliberry, participated. The meeting culminated in an eight-kilometer solidarity race in the Collserola Natural Park, which offers a spectacular panoramic view of the city of Barcelona, in which some 200 runners participated.

Armengou has been a member of the IESE Board of Directors as secretary general since September 2018 and is part of the faculty staff in the Department of Decision Analysis. In 2007 he was appointed Vicechancellor for Academic Planning and Teaching Staff of the International University of Catalonia and professor of his School of Architecture. In 2016 he became Vicechancellor for Academic Planning and International Relations.