Leire Barañano Orbe
She has a degree in Business Administration and Management and has completed her training with a Master's Degree in Foreign and International Trade at the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea and the Food Business Management Programme (DEA) at the San Telmo International Institute, among others. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis within the Business Management, Knowledge and Innovation programme at the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea on issues related to the forest bioeconomy.
In her nearly 25 years of professional career, Leire Barañano has had the opportunity to get to know the agri-food chain and innovation at close quarters. She started at EROSKI, a food distribution company, as head of corporate planning and control. At EROSKI she also held the positions of Corporate Planning and Image Manager and Customer-Brand Marketing Manager, and was able to deepen her knowledge of the processing and production sectors and the end market.
She then joined AZTI, a food and marine research centre, where she took on the role of Director of Value and set herself the challenge of ensuring that the research teams were geared towards finding solutions for the food sector.
Since the beginning of 2017, she has been working at Neiker, a technology centre that offers innovative solutions to the agri-food and forestry sector, and has also been the main driving force behind the Basque Country's Bioeconomy Strategic Plan.
She actively collaborates in the marketing and entrepreneurship masters of the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea and has been a member of the Board of the European Forest Institute since 2018.
