Arancha Manzanares, vice president of Ayesa, has won the third edition of the CaixaBank Women in Business Award, which recognises the professional and business excellence of women who show outstanding leadership in Spanish business.
The jury of the CaixaBank Women in Business Award is formed by the CaixaBank Diversity Committee, in turn made up of directorial members of the management committee and by various leaders of diversity projects. Arancha Manzanares has been selected among the 14 winners of the territorial phase, for her outstanding professional career, her success in the company's internationalisation and diversification strategy – now an international technological company with projects around the world – and her commitment to promoting innovation and professional development.
Arancha Manzanares is a Doctor in Industrial Engineering from the University of Seville (1992 and 2006), and took the Senior Management Programme (PADE) at the IESE Business School. She joined Ayesa in 1996, where she has taken on various roles. In 2004, she became the managing director of ACT Sistemas, the origin of the group's IT department. Between 2005 and 2007, she took on the role of General Corporate Management. In 2011, she was appointed chairwoman of Ayesa Advanced Technologies, and since May 2019 is the vice president of Ayesa.
According to Manzanares, the award gives her "great pride, not only for representing Spain, but also all the women who will accompany me in New Delhi. We are proof that effort and hard work are the true driving forces behind achieving big objectives."
Ayesa is Spain’s largest engineering and technology consultancy (ETC) firm. Founded in Seville in 1966 as a company related to water and infrastructure projects, the company has diversified itself geographically and at the sectorial level, until becoming a consultancy firm that covers a wide spectrum, with projects all over the world.
Its international experience and presence in 17 countries has made it one of the hundred largest groups worldwide in the field of engineering, and a benchmark in terms of the digital transformation of large companies and the public sector.
Its double role as an expert in infrastructure and developer of information systems is not just a distinguishing factor, but also a new, fully vertical business model, which is ideal for facing the challenges of a smart, connected world.
For Ayesa, business ethics are a key intangible asset. It has a zero tolerance policy for corruption, reflected in its code of ethics and in all its processes.
The IWEC Awards
As a national winner of the CaixaBank 2019 Women in Business Award, Arancha Manzanares will be one of the Spanish representatives at the IWEC Awards 2019, which will be handed out on 12 November in New Delhi, in the framework of the 12th International Women's Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC) Conference, a global network of leading women entrepreneurs around the world, who cooperate globally with the goal to help create and distribute wealth in the business world.
The first edition of these awards took place in Barcelona in February 2007; subsequently, they were held in New York (2008), New Delhi (2009), Cape Town (2010), New York (2011), Barcelona (2012), Lima (2013), Stockholm (2014), Istanbul (2015), Brussels (2016), Seattle (2017) and Shanghai (2018).
In 2018, this international award ceremony acknowledged the careers of 48 businesswomen from 20 countries. The global turnover of the companies run by these women stands above 1.7 billion dollars and they employ more than 48,000 people.
CaixaBank, committed to diversity
The CaixaBank Women in Business Award, now in its third edition, has consolidated itself throughout Spain as a result of its support to women in business. It is part of CaixaBank's Wengage programme, which promotes the value of diversity and equal opportunities by carrying out a series of actions within the company aimed at promoting the talent and professional development of the women it employs. At the end of May 2019, the company had 40.1% of women in management positions.
In the external setting, CaixaBank promotes awards and conferences to increase the visibility of women in many areas of responsibility. This is precisely the goal of the CaixaBank Women in Business Award, which acknowledges the careers of women in the business world; or the WONNOW awards, in collaboration with Microsoft, which acknowledge the best students in the STEM fields (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). In addition, in 2018, CaixaBank promoted 70 conferences in Spain to raise awareness on the value of diversity; and 11 Diversity Talks in the bank's international network.
Wengage is part of CaixaBank's Diversity Plan, which seeks to foster diversity in all its forms and reflects the socially responsible banking model, characterised by its commitment to the environment, its social approach and its contribution to the development of people and society as a whole.
