Values of Excellence

What makes the IESE experience unique? Business leaders, executives and alumni explain the values that make IESE a pioneering business school that stands out for its excellence and its humanist focus.

KENNETH S. ROGOFF, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
“I’m impressed by IESE’s dynamism and its alumni’s involvement”

“I am genuinely impressed by IESE’s global reach, its vision for the future and its opportunities for growth around the world. It is, in fact, a great school with a bright present and future. I am also fascinated by its dynamism and, of course, by its campus and its alumni’s involvement. It is obvious that IESE is one of the world’s leading business schools.”

Kenneth S. Rogoff is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He has also lectured at Princeton University, as Charles and Marie Robertson Professor of International Affairs. He has served as Economic Counselor and Director of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from August 2001 to September 2003. Rogoff began his career at the IMF as an economist and also at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He is an elected member of the American Academy of
Arts and Science as well as the Econometric Society, and a former Guggenheim Fellow.

NICHOLAS SHREIBER, EX-PRESIDENT OF TETRA PAK
“There is plenty of face-to-facecontact. The interaction betweenstudents and faculty is very special”

“Every school has its own character and personality. IESE has certain features that set it apart. One is that it is not a very large school and there is plenty of face-to-face contact. This kind of interaction, evident between students and faculty, is very, very special. Another element is its international outlook. A very high percentage of MBA students come from other countries, in clear contrast to the trend in the U.S. Very few similar schools are quite as international as IESE. Furthermore, the school’s senior management believes in the importance of business initiative and dynamism, which is quite apparent in the school.”

Though born in Argentina, where he studied engineering, he has Swiss and Scottish roots, a truly international background that has no doubt infl uenced his career. He worked in management consultancy with McKinsey, and then joined Tetra Pak, where he was Director of Operations in America and was one of the key drivers of the company’s growth. He currently sits on advisory committees
of several academic institutions: IESE, IMD, Harvard, Emory University. And he is the father of the “Shreiber Scholarships” in Russia and Argentina.

 RAFAEL VILLASECA (MBA ‘76), CEO OF GAS NATURAL
“What stands out is the focuson the concept of general management”
“There can be no doubt that IESE transformed my professional life and greatly influenced my personal life. Many years have passed since I earned my MBA at IESE, but the foundation and core concepts that I learned still guide my work and provide essential support to tackle new business challenges. I must underscore the concept and focus of general management that I learned back then, which over the years has been infinitely valuable and effective. It’s also important to highlight the ethical and human values that frame the IESE experience. They have also had a big impact on my life.”

Born in 1951 in Barcelona, he holds an Industrial Engineering degree with a minor in Industrial Organization from the Catalonia Polytechnic University, and an MBA from IESE, University of Navarra. He was been CEO of Gas Natural since January 2005. He has previously held the roles of CEO of Enagás, Managing Director of Grupo Panrico, President of Túneles y Accesos de Barcelona (TABASA), President of Túnel del Cadí, S.A.C., President of Gestión
de Infraestructuras, President of Grupo INISEL (now Grupo INDRA), CEO of Nueva Montaña Quijano, Director of Gas Natural and Director of Amper. He has also been president of the IESE Alumni Association.

EDMUND S. PHELPS, WINNER OF THE NOBEL MEMORIAL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS 2006, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
“A good place for reflection”

“It is good to have meetings like the Global Alumni Reunion
that allows us to refl ect on all kinds of change: new improvements, changes that have never been discussed before or changes that we’ve never even dreamed of. We can’t delegate our ideas on economics on to bureaucrats and politicians, we need to pass them on to business leaders and entrepreneurs whose role it is to develop innovative ideas.”

Phelps’s most seminal work was his rudimentary theory of a “natural” rate of unemployment – its existence, how its size is determined and how market forces may drive unemployment from it. A common thread running through the Nobel prizewinner’s work is his effort to put people into economic models. He has sought to take account of the incompleteness of their information and their knowledge and to study the effect of their expectations and beliefs on market outcomes. Phelps received his PhD from Yale University and taught at this university and at Pennsylvania before joining Columbia in 1971. A few of his most renowned research papers are Money-Wage Dynamics and Labor Market Equilibriumand Macroeconomic Foundations of Employment and Infl ation
Theory.

FRANKLIN PITCH JOHNSON, FOUNDING PARTNER OF ASSET MANAGEMENT AND MEMBER OF IESE’S IAB
“IESE’s faculty is whatsets it apart”

“What really impressed me about IESE was how, instead of focusing on Barcelona or Madrid, they had a global perspective. Furthermore, faculty and research staff are highly competent, which is what sets IESE apart from many management schools.”

His talent has made him one of Silicon Valley’s venture capital pioneers. An entrepreneur with great vision, he devised the first entrepreneurial initiative and venture capital course to be taught at a business school, Stanford, where he studied. He also headed the National Venture Capital Association and the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Economic Policy Research and the IESE International Advisory Board.

AURORA CATÁ (MBA ‘89 AND PADE ‘03), DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT AT GRUPO RSC
“At IESE one can share personalconcerns”

“It is no easy task to find an environment of trust and excellence with first-class faculty and distinguished professionals willing to build bridges, sharing information and ideas, not only during one’s business education but throughout one’s career.
IESE has the ability of creating and nurturing relationships between the academic and professional worlds which has great business and personal value, and a powerful mushroom effect. We are interdependent, although at times from the business perspective we may lose sight of this fact. Having this vision is a significant source of value creation. At IESE one can share personal concerns, experience and knowledge, which is of utmost importance throughout
one’s career.”

Aurora holds a degree in Industrial Engineering and an MBA and PADE from IESE. She is currently Business Development Director in Latin America for Grupo RSC, after having served as Director of Magazines and Supplements, a position she has held since the merger between Unedisa and Recoletos, where she was Managing Director and member of the Board of Directors since 2003. Counselor for Service Point Solutions and member of ONO Cataluña, Fomento del Trabajo Nacional and Ambers Cataluña advisory boards. Member of the IESE Alumni Association Executive Committee. She began her career at Bank of America and Nissan Motor Ibérica, in the role of Finance Director. She later worked as Managing Director of RTVE in Catalonia and afterwards became CEO of Planeta 2010.

NIALL FERGUSON, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
“IESE is a marvelous institution and it must be fantastic to study here”
“It has been a great pleasure to take part in IESE’s 50th anniversary through my participation in the Global Alumni Reunion which took place at the school’s new campus buildings in Barcelona. I have only spent a short period of time here, but long enough to realize that IESE is a marvelous institution and how fantastic it must be to study here.”

Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. One of the leading historians of the global economy, he is the author of titles such as the critically-acclaimed The Pity of War: Explaining World War One and the awardwinning History of the House of Rothschild. His new book, The War of the World: Twentieth Century Confl ict and the Descent of the West, examines ethnicity, empires and the revival of the East.

MARÍA DEL PINO (PDD ‘84), FUNDACIÓN RAFAEL DEL PINO
“IESE taught me the importance of thorough diagnosis”
“When I was younger, IESE taught me, among many other things, the importance of diagnosis as an essential step towards solving problems. The hardest thing sometimes is actually doing it, given the complexity of certain situations. At IESE I have especially valued its keen sensitivity for issues relating to people in an organization. In recent years, IESE and the Fundación Rafael del Pino have collaborated in educational programs. As partners, we have always been able to appreciate the quest for rigor and a job well done.”

Vice-president of Fundación Rafael del Pino, María del Pino is currently also member of the board of directors of the Executive Committee of Grupo Ferrovial and member of the Council of the Codespa Foundation (aiding development) and the Scientifi c Foundation of the Spanish Cancer Association. She holds a degree in Economics from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, and a PDD from IESE.