The future of work and consumption

Dr. Jordi Gual has served as Chairman of CaixaBank since 2016. He holds a PhD in Economics (1987) from the University of California at Berkeley and is a professor of Economics at the IESE Business School and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London.

He currently sits on the board of directors of Telefónica and on the Supervisory Board at Erste Group Bank. He is also Chairman of FEDEA, Vice President of Círculo de Economía and Cotec Foundation for Innovation, and he serves on the boards of CEDE Foundation, Real Instituto Elcano and Barcelona Mobile World Capital Foundation.

Prior to his appointment as Chairman of CaixaBank, he was Chief Economist and Head of Strategic Planning and Research for CaixaBank and Director-General of Planning and Strategic Development for CriteriaCaixa. Jordi Gual joined the “la Caixa” Group in 2005. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Repsol and served as an economics advisor for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs in Brussels and as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.

His work on banking, European integration, regulation and competition policy has been widely published.

In 1999 he was awarded the Research Prize from the European Investment Bank and in 1979 the Extraordinary Award for his degree in Economics and Business. He has also been a Fulbright Scholar.

Born in Switzerland in 1964, Jacques Reber holds a Degree in Economics from the University of Geneva.

He began his professional career at Nestlé in the Swiss market in 1990 as an internal auditor. Three years later, he was transferred to the headquarters of Nestlé Waters where he created the Audit Department in Paris. In 1997 he was appointed Controller of the Southern European and Asian area and was subsequently in charge of the Procurement Department for the AOA Zone (Asia, Oceania, and Africa).

In 1999 he was appointed Country Business Manager of Nestlé Waters in Portugal, a position he held until 2004. After that he was then appointed Director of the Carrefour account at Nestlé Waters France.

In 2005 he took his first position in Asia, as Country Business Manager of Nestlé Waters in Japan. Back in Europe, he was entrusted with various business development projects in the EMENA Zone (Europe, Middle East and North Africa) until 2009, when he was appointed Managing Director of Nestlé Romania.

In 2012 he moved back to Portugal as General Director of Nestlé Portugal until 2015, when he was appointed General Director of Nestlé Philippines.

Finally, in 2018 he was assigned his current responsibility as General Manager of Nestlé Spain.

Born in Madrid, Ignacio García Magarzo holds a Law Degree from the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 1993 he joined the Superior Corps of Civil Administrators of the State. During his ten-year duration in the Public Administration he held various positions, including head of technical staff or deputy director general in the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Science and Technology. He is a member of the Eurocommerce Board.

ASEDAS is the first food distribution business organization in our country. It brings together the main Spanish companies that together add up to almost 70% of the commercial area dedicated to food. The chains associated with ASEDAS add up to a total of nearly 19,000 stores and employ about 260,000 workers.

ASEDAS turned 20 in 2019, during which it has represented its associated companies before administrations and other social actors at the local, regional national, and European levels since the beginning of dialogue and consensus.

Sacha Michaud is an English entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in the Spanish online sector and with long experience in creating successful companies. In 1997, Sacha founded LatinRed, one of the largest internet service providers in Spain, which two years later sold to StarMedia. During his career, he has founded numerous companies including Inlander, that was sold in 2000, Binary a successful digital communication agency and Transword an online translation company. After 9 years leading the Betfair Iberia team, in 2015 he teamed up with Oscar Pierre to create Glovo. Since then, the company, with HQ in Barcelona, is in more than 750 cities in 22 countries. 

Songül Tolan is part of the HUMAINT (HUman behaviour and MAchine INTelligence) research project at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Her research focuses on the ethical implications of bias in high-stakes algorithmic decision-making and understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labour markets and the consequences for skills demand. Her work at the intersection of AI and social sciences has been presented at international conferences and appeared in peer-reviewed journals. She has a PhD in Economics from the Freie Universität in Berlin and has previously worked on labour market and fiscal effects of education and pension politics at the public economics department of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin.