Last Monday, May 7th, Alfa Consulting took part in ESADE Business School Alumni Annual Conference, as one of the collaborating companies. The Palau de Congressos de Catalunya hosted the 23rd edition of one of the association’s flagship events and a meeting point for old classmates, friends and work colleagues. The keynote speaker of this year and winner of the ESADE 2018 Award was Hiroshi Mikitani, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten Inc.

ESADE 2018 Award

The ESADE Alumni president, Maite Barrera, opened the ceremony by thanking everyone for coming along and thanking the event’s sponsors and collaborators for their support, being Alfa Consulting one of them. She talked about her experience of the importance of people in an organisation. Later,  the ESADE managing director, Eugenia Bieto, joined her and celebrated the fact that the heads of ESADE and ESADE Alumni were both women. Bieto, during her speech, praised Hiroshi Mikitani.  “Rakuten will be recognized and awarded because they had the courage and vision to do things differently. The company has emerged as one of the leading internet service companies in the global market”, she said.

The ESADE 2018 award was then presented to Hiroshi Mikitani for his work at the head of Rakuten’s global strategy.  This award is “an acknowledgement of his outstanding career, his way of managing leaders and inspiring people, and his vision of providing first-rate financial services”.

After accepting the award, Pedro Parada, director of ESADE’s department of general management and strategy and board member of ESADE Alumni, interviewed Hiroshi Mikitani, in front of almost 2,000 ESADE alumni.

The event ended with the traditional cocktail, this year to the sound of The Tutsies, with the support act, ESADE Musicians. An after-show ticket office enabled the audience to make donations to the #ESADEgoespink fundraising campaign for breast cancer research and a greater awareness of juvenile dermatomyositis.