LONDON — Having left Inditex Group last month, Pablo Isla is moving on and will become chairman of IE University’s International Advisory Board.
IE is a private university with campuses in Madrid, and across Spain, and offers undergraduate, postgraduate, doctorate and executive education programs in business, global and public affairs, technology, architecture and design, and law.
Isla — who as chief executive officer and executive chairman helped to steer Zara’s parent Inditex through a phase of rapid growth; a transition to omnichannel retail, and the pursuit of ambitious sustainability goals –– will “help to promote the work” of the IE board.
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The board is comprised of leading international figures from the institutional, academic and business worlds, including Carolina Barco, former Colombian minister of foreign affairs; Usha Prashar, a member of the House of Lords in Kenya, and Wei Lin Kwee, senior vice president, hotels at Pontiac Land Group in Singapore.
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The role of the board is to help IE University’s senior management team “fulfill the purpose of the institution” and promote its main strategic initiatives and key projects.
Diego del Alcázar Benjumea, CEO of IE University, said Isla’s “global vision, his leadership style and his values will be key in promoting our strategic projects. We will work together to fulfill our purpose of positive change through education, innovation and research.”
Isla said his business experience has taught him that “education is fundamental to progress, and to being able to contribute in a sustainable way to the improvement of society. I join IE University with the aim of contributing to this path of training people with an entrepreneurial, humanistic, and innovative spirit.”
Isla became chairman and CEO of Inditex in 2005 and in 2011 was promoted to executive chairman. Before that, he was chairman of Altadis group before becoming CEO and deputy chairman of Inditex.
The IE role is the first one Isla has taken on since leaving Inditex on March 31. He was named a member of the Patronage at La Caixa Foundation last February, just before leaving Inditex.
Isla is also a director on Nestlé’s Board and trustee of the Amancio Ortega Foundation. He has been recognized as the best-performing CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review and, in 2020, Forbes named him the best CEO of the decade.
Inditex, which has more than 6,400 stores and 150,000 employees, closed 2021 with a turnover of 27.72 billion euros and a net profit of 3.24 billion euros, with online sales representing more than 25 percent of revenue.