European Young Leaders (#EYL40)

Andrea Barber Lazcano is a Spanish entrepreneur and champion of sustainable energy. As the Co-Founder and CEO of RatedPower, she leads the sustainable and energy-efficient design and construction of solar photovoltaic (PV) plants. The award-winning, cloud-based software company’s pvDesign is a game-changing technology that has transformed and revolutionised traditional engineering through optimisation and automatisation in order to improve the performance and profitability of solar PV plants. Barber Lazcano is on a mission to accelerate the energy transition by contributing to the widespread use of solar energy, reducing CO₂ emissions and increasing the competitiveness of sustainable energy worldwide, with plans to expand beyond the solar sector and into the wind and storage sectors. A champion of female entrepreneurship, Barber Lazcano also hosts the Vostok 6 podcast, which gives visibility to the stories of trailblazing women, in order to inspire and empower listeners.

Josep-Maria Gascón is the Co-Founder and CEO Meditech Capital, a telemedicine company which diagnoses cardiovascular diseases, and Vitaes, a boutique strategic executive consulting firm that provides insights on macroeconomic data to help high-level decision-makers understand the evolution of societies and economies, as well as asses business options and risks. He is the former director of strategy and competitive intelligence within Ministry of Business of the Government of Catalonia and previously served as the head of finance excellence and one of the leading lawyers at the chemical giant Solvay. Josep-Maria received the Forbes 40 under Forty Award as one of the best young lawyers in the Iberian Peninsula. He has held several senior positions on all continents in general management, business strategy, as well as legal and tax advice. He was appointed a Business Ambassador by the Government of Catalonia for his role in attracting investment to the region. Josep-Maria is also the President of the World Chemical Summit and a Professor of Resource Management at the GBSB Global Business School. He is a frequent speaker and authors articles in international and national media about leadership, organisational behaviour, change management and geopolitics.

Javier is an entrepreneur and founder of a number of award-winning technology start-ups, which have been backed by top venture capital funds and multinational corporations. Javier is currently a shareholder and board member of several tech companies, prior to which he was the international director of Digimarc Corporation and served in management roles for various start-ups, including Alvento and Mobile 365 Inc. He founded aquaMobile SL, a mobile value-added services provider based in Madrid, which became one of the most successful digital watermarking solutions companies during his time as CEO. He is also the co-founder of the tMA Foundation, which encourages innovation and entrepreneurial projects in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and operates FabLab León, a member of MIT’s FabLab Network and host of the Fab Academy training program.

Elena is currently the Head of Data & Advanced Analytics, Client Solutions at BBVA and a member of the Digital Leaders Group Europe at the World Economic Forum. Elena formerly served as CEO of BBVA Data & Analytics and previously managed the innovation unit at BBVA, where she led a global initiative on big data and smart cities, which aimed to create new urban services based on smart data and information management. She gained international recognition for the initiative’s accomplishments. Prior to establishing herself as an expert in the field of innovation, Elena played an active role in the development of telecommunications in EMEA and LATAM in the business development area.

As Founder of Clarity AI, Rebeca looks to solve the problem of inefficient and unequal allocation of capital by building an automated tool which rates the investment portfolios of a range of projects, companies, governments and NGOs. Rebeca is also the Founder of the Blink Booking mobile app, an award-winning last-minute booking app that is a market leader in Europe with more than 800,000 downloads, almost 3,000 hotels and available in six languages before its sale to Groupon. Previously, Rebeca served as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and as engineer at the German Aerospace Agency, Siemens and IBM.

Alfredo is a Spanish architect, who has designed and managed more than six million square metres across five continents. Under Alfredo’s leadership, his architectural, urban and interior design firm has designed projects in a wide range of scales, from large urban developments and affordable housing townships to small temporal structures. Before founding ABIBOO, Alfredo held senior roles at Toyo Ito and SOM. Internationally-renowned, Alfredo was recognised among the most important and emerging young architects and designers by the European Centre and the Chicago Athenaeum Architecture Awards, and his work has been featured in various media outlets, including The New York Times, Wallpaper and Domus, among others.

Sara is an engineer at S.A. de Electronica Submarina (SAES), a company specialised in submarine electronics and acoustics. Prior to this, she was a Member of the Murcian regional Parliament where she served as First Secretary of the Defense Committee as well as a Member of the Science and Innovation and Equality Committees. She has been a Member of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party since she was 16. She studied communications engineering and has worked in the defence policy sector. She stands for male-female parity in Spain’s politics and for the presence of members of parliament of all ages.