Doing Business in Latin America

Juan Carlos Martínez-Lazaro

IE Business School

Full-time professor in the area of Economics at IE Business School since 1992, Juan Carlos Martínez Lázaro has a deep working knowledge of world politics and economy, enabling him to collaborate regularly with major financial journals and media agents in Spain and abroad, such as Antena 3, Capital Radio, or the CNN.
His teaching work has been made compatible with various management positions within IE Business School, where he has been Managing Director of Custom Programs Department, Director of the Publishing Department, Director of Planning and Operations, Associate Director of the MBA and Executive MBA programs, and Associate Director of the Admissions Department. Currently, he is the Director of Corporate Relations in Spain.
Juan Carlos holds a degree in Economics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and an MBA from IE Business School. He is author of numerous publications on the analysis of international situations, country analysis and economic policies. He spent some years as the Executive editor of the “Revista de Empresa”, an academic journal published by the IE Business School Foundation in collaboration with the Iberoamerican Academy of Management. Since 2008 he runs the report “Overview of the Spanish Investment in Latin America”.

Daniel Ibarzabal Pérez

President and CEO

Grupo IF

Born in Zumárraga, Spain, on 2nd July 2018.
Daniel completed his Economics studies in the Universities of Michigan and Kentucky, USA, in 1990.
He obtained a Master in Business Administration from IE Business School in 1994. Daniel started his professional path in 1989 at The Coca-Cola company (Iberian Division) where he assumed diverse responsibilities in the Development, Marketing and Commercial areas, becoming the Head of the brands Fanta and Sprite.
In 1998, Daniel joined Campofrío as Marketing Director, taking the role of General Director of Navidul during his last period in the company.

In 2009, Daniel moved to his current company, Grupo Fierro as the General Director of Operations. From 2012, Daniel is the Chief Executive Officer of this group and therefore is at the highest executive level.
Grupo Fierro is an international group originated in Spain that operates in more than eight countries in Latin America in diverse sectors such as: petrol and gas, real estate and mass consumer goods. The turnover of this group is approximately USD 750 million and currently employs over 4.000 people.

Elena Gil Lizasoain

Global Director of Big Data

Telefonica

As the Global Director for Big Data B2B at the Telefonica Group and CEO at LUCA Data Driven Decisions, Elena’s responsibility is to help corporate customers on their Big Data adoption journey, enabling them to become data-driven companies, providing an extensive portfolio of cutting-edge Big Data solutions.
Elena holds a degree in Economics and Business studies from Deusto University (Spain) and an MBA from MIT-Sloan School of Management (USA). She has also completed studies at Berkeley University (USA) and EDHEC de Lille (France).
Elena joined Telefonica in 2000. Since then, she has held prominent managerial positions at Telefonica International and Telefonica Latinoamérica, in the units of Large Corporations, Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) and Consumer businesses. From 2014 to 2016, Elena was the BI & Big Data Global Director at Telefonica Group, responsible for leveraging customer insights for internal use and external monetization, leading the transformation of Telefónica into a data-driven company.
Before joining Telefonica, she worked for McKinsey and HI Holding – Iberdrola (Spain) and Mitchel Madison Group (USA).

Maite Aranzabal

Independent Corporate Director

Adolfo Dominguez

Maite has more than 25 years of Consumer and Retail international experience in positions of managing director, strategic planning, business development and operations in fashion, consumer, retail and consulting companies. She has served as CEO, General Manager, International Sales Director and Marketing Director.
She is the founder of Alir, a consulting firm to Fashion and Retail companies. Here, she helped several mid-­size Spanish brands in their process of expanding abroad, with a special focus in the Gulf and Latin- American countries.
She is on the Board of Directors Member in family owned businesses, universities and non-­profits in Spain.
Based in Madrid, she is an Independent Corporate Board Member in Adolfo Dominguez, SA. She has been a Non-­Executive Director in Tuc-­Tuc, a family owned business in the fashion industry, as well as actual Board member of the Fundación Novia Salcedo and the Fundación Antonio Aranzabal boards.

Natalia Bayona

Vice-President International Business Development

Spain Startup– South Summit

Natalia Bayona is the Vice-president of International Business Development at Spain Startup - South Summit, a company that organizes South Summit, the global platforms which reunites key players in the entrepreneurship ecosystem that, in only four years, has become the leading innovative meeting place with over 12.500 attendees, over 100 nationalities, 650 investors, 160 companies and over a billion dollars awarded to startup finalists.
A professional in Governmental and International relations from Universidad Externado de Colombia, Natalia Bayona holds an Executive MBA from IE Business School. She was recently chosen by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to integrate WEF’s European Digital Leaders Network.
With a tenure in ProColombia, she managed to live in six countries where she has developed strategies to boost exports, foreign investment and tourism in Colombia. It started in 2006, where she was part of the team that created the first campaign promoting tourism for the country at an international level: Colombia, the risk is that you want to stay, sought to change the image of the country abroad. Thanks to its success, she managed to run the campaign in more than 15 countries.
In 2010, as a tourism consultant at the ProColombia Office in Chile, she was able to train more than 1,000 Chilean and Argentine entrepreneurs to showcase business opportunities with Colombia and in 2012 she managed to open through her representation, the Colombian Government Commercial Office for Argentina, developing a customized and segmented work plan with more than 100 entrepreneurs from markets of the Southern Cone of Latin America while managing to support investments of more than 15 Argentinean companies to the country valued at more than USD 30,000,000, increasing the presence of Colombia in tourist catalogs by 15%.