There is a factor of luck, but I would not have come this far without effort, humility, empathy and attitude”, explains Jordi Argemí, one of the young managers awarded by the Seeliger y Conde consultancy at the 8th Talented Young Managers Awards. At 37 years old, Argemí is the deputy general manager and chief financial officer of the real estate company Neinor Homes, which went public in 2017 under his leadership. A milestone that the consultant has recognized in an event held at the IESE business school in collaboration with the Princess of Girona Foundation.
In this edition – which is being held after a four-year hiatus due to the pandemic – the Barcelona consulting firm also recognizes the trajectory of Román Campa (40), CEO of Adevinta Spain; Patricia Cortada (36), senior vice president of airports in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions for the IAG group; Ana Costi (38), director of marketing at Amazon for Spain, Italy and Portugal; Patricia Lajara (40), vice president of human resources for Ralph Lauren; Luis Martín Lostao (35), head of business transformation for Coca Cola Europacific Partners and Ignacio Merry del Val (40), leader of global e-commerce operations for Ikea.
On this occasion, the jury was made up of the partners of Seeliger and Conde, the winners of the previous edition, represented by Miguel Arias Bermúdez, entrepreneur and investor in the technology sector; Adolfo Díaz-Ambrona, general secretary of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce; Jon Fernández de Barrena, CEO of Altadis; and Salvador Tasqué, general director of the Princess of Girona Foundation.
"Edition after edition, our objective is to recognize the professional careers of young executives who have assumed relevant positions in complex and international environments", pointed out the president Luis Conde, who also highlighted courage, effort and optimism as key elements for good leadership.
“We young people have to make more of an effort to demonstrate our aptitudes and even more so if we are the only women in the room,” admits Patricia Cortada, who throughout her career as an aerospace engineer has been surrounded by men. Although the award-winning women considered that during their professional career they had not been discriminated against (rather the opposite, since their careers have always been on the rise), Ana Costi admits that on some occasions, the barriers are more internal than external. "Sometimes, insecurities linked to being a woman surface that later turn out to have no meaning," she has said.
In addition, most of the award-winning young managers have recalled the difficulties they had to face when joining the world of work, just after the financial crisis broke out more than ten years ago. In the case of Román Campa, the pandemic crisis was also a shock, although he has recognized that “in the end, adversity became an opportunity, because I had to focus more on people than on business and for me it was a learning”, said the CEO of Adevinta Spain.
Ignacio Merry del Val has expressed himself in the same vein: “success depends on being adaptive and at the service of others, and more on acting and less on controlling results”. And also Patricia Lajara, who leads a team of 5,000 people at Ralph Lauren and considers it essential to place employees at the center of any business strategy.
The success of these managers is also measured by their impact on the international market. Especially noteworthy is the work of Luis Martín Lostao, who at 35 is based in Jakarta (Indonesia) to lead the transformation of the Coca Cola Europacific Partners business in the Asian market.
