Xavier Torra appointed as President of the ESADE Foundation Board of Trustees

• With this appointment, ESADE consolidates its position as an academic institution committed to embodying its mission and identity in every aspect of its activity
• Xavier Torra, President of the Board of Trustees of the Eurecat Technology Centre, will replace Joaquín Uriach, whose two-year term at the helm of ESADE’s top governing body has come to an end

Xavier Torra, President of the Board of Trustees of the Eurecat Technology Centre, has been elected to a two-year term of office as President of the ESADE Foundation Board of Trustees. Mr. Torra will replace Joaquín Uriach, who has spent the last two years at the helm of ESADE’s top governing body.

Over the past two years, ESADE has consolidated the international prestige of its campuses in Barcelona, Sant Cugat and Madrid, welcomed students of more than 100 nationalities into its classrooms, hired additional international faculty members, and expanded its portfolio of transoceanic education programmes and double degrees. The Financial Times recently ranked ESADE as one of the top 10 business schools in Europe for executive education, confirming the success of the institution’s efforts to promote academic excellence and develop an innovative educational offering.

Mr. Torra’s ties to ESADE date back many years. He was a collaborating lecturer at the institution for more than 25 years and joined the Board of Trustees as Vice President in 2017.

With this appointment, ESADE consolidates its commitment to embodying its mission and identity in every aspect of its activity. Xavier Torra commented: “The institution remains committed to being at the forefront of academic innovation in disruptive times and internationally admired for its impact on society and for the professional and human quality of its students.”

Xavier Torra is the President of the Board of Trustees of the Eurecat Technology Centre and, currently, the Vice President of the ESADE Foundation Board of Trustees. He served as President of the Board of Trustees of Oxfam Intermón Spain for eight years before stepping down in 2018. He served for 23 years as CEO of Simon Holding, a group of manufacturers of small electrical and lighting components with a presence in more than 20 countries. Before that, he held various executive positions at DuPont de Nemours, British Petroleum and Union Carbide (Argon).

Mr. Torra earned a degree in industrial engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (1973). He went on to earn a Master in Marketing Management from ESADE (1984), where he was a collaborating lecturer for more than 25 years. He was CEO of the AltBath Company and has served on the board of various family-run businesses, including Alsina, Borges, Girbau, Metalogenia, Roquet and SECE. He was a member of the BBVA advisory board in Catalonia, the Catalan government’s Advisory Committee for Economic Reactivation and Growth (CAREC), and the industrial and taxation committees of Círculo de Economía.

This communication was first published 13 June 2019 by ESADE.