More than 1,800 students from EAE Business School Barcelona graduated at the ceremony yesterday at the Palau Sant Jordi
Rosa Tous, Corporate Vice-President and Reach and Relevance Officer at TOUS, patron of the graduation class at EAE Business School Barcelona
“Only by being curious will you be able to apply your studies throughout your long professional career, and never stop learning and training to achieve excellence”
More than 1,800 Bachelor Degree and Master students from EAE Business School Barcelona, which belongs to Planeta Formación y Universidades, graduated at the ceremony held yesterday at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, with an audience of 3,000 family members and friends. The patron of the graduating class was Rosa Tous, the Corporate Vice-President and Reach and Relevance Officer at TOUS. The event was hosted by the President of Grupo Planeta, José Creuheras.
During her speech as the patron of the graduating class, Rosa Tous emphasized her parents’ role as the architects of what has gone on to become TOUS, with over 600 stores in more than 40 countries: “My mother, Rosa Oriol, had the vision and intuition to understand that society was changing and that women wanted jewellery to wear in their day-to-day lives, not only on special occasions”.
“My parents make a great double act in both their personal and professional lives. We have always seen my mother as the heart and my father as the head. My mother created and my father searched for the right formula to make her creations a reality”, added the Corporate Vice-President and Reach and Relevance Officer at TOUS, who was welcomed to the event by the President of Grupo Planeta, José Creuheras, at the Palau Sant Jordi in front of an audience of 6,000 people.
In her speech, Tous also advised the new graduates of the Master and Bachelor Degrees to check their “compass” after finishing this stage of their journey. “This compass is your purpose, your reason why, the motivation behind what you do, your reason for being, and the impact you generate on your environment through what you do”, she explained. Tous also emphasized that it is also a company’s purpose that guides all the people that form part of it.
She went on to add that “At TOUS, we have a very clear idea of our purpose: We craft a world of joy. This is what enables us to reinvent the future of the sector every day through innovation and digitization, without losing sight of our craft and our love for jewellery, all while taking care of our planet through sustainability”.
She also outlined a rule that she has followed to great effect throughout her career, which she sums up in 3 Cs: Consistency, Coherence and Consequence. “If we are consistent with our actions, we stay firmly on our path and on course for our purpose; only if we act coherently with our beliefs, can we hope to build a solid road ahead; we must understand that all our actions generate an impact and have consequences for ourselves and our surroundings. These consequences must be aligned with our way of being”.
To bring her speech to a close, she added a new C to the list: Curiosity, as a vital and constant feature of our professional careers: “Only by being curious will you be able to apply your studies throughout your long professional career, and never stop learning and training to achieve excellence”.
“At the end of the day, we only manage to achieve excellence in the things we do if we are demanding of ourselves and act ethically and consistently, which we can only do if we know ourselves well and have a clear understanding of our purpose”, she concluded.
After the patron’s speech, four representatives of the graduating class came to the stage to give their speeches: Precy Servito from the MIB; Byron Enmanuel Monzón from the Master in Big Data & Analytics, Maria Martín, from the Master in Digital Marketing and Valeria Cadarso, from the Bachelor Degree in Business Administration and Management.
The Academic Director of Planeta Formación y Universidades, Montserrat Civera, also shared a few words with the students: “You are not saying goodbye to EAE Business School Barcelona today. You are entering a new stage in which you become EAE Alumni. The School is and will always be your home. You have the support of the Planeta Formación y Universidades network to continue developing your career”.
THE AWARDS
At the graduation ceremony, a number of awards and accolades were given to some of the key players of this 2023-2024 academic year. Firstly, the EAE Entrepreneur Award was presented to Wasi 3D, an affordable housing project using 3D printing developed at the incubator at EAE Barcelona and winner of the Babson Challenge. The project is masterminded by Elinore Cruz, a student on the Master in Digital Marketing & Growth Hawking and Diego de La Torre and Álvaro Valarezo, students on the Master in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Other accolades presented at the ceremony included the Top Talent Award, which went to Agustín Michelena, from the International MBA; the Top Teaching Excellence Award, which went to Francesc Rufas and John Wetherell, who received a standing ovation from their students; the Strategic Partner Award, which was given to Hewlett Packard Enterprise; and the Top Recruiter Award, which went to Mango.
The Dean of EAE Business School Barcelona, Enric Ordeix, brought the graduation ceremony to a close with a clear message for the graduates: “The principles that drive us at EAE are employability, entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability. We have worked tirelessly to explain each of these principles in detail, to ensure that they end up forming part of your professional DNA. From now onwards, you are our allies, our ambassadors”.
To mark the end of the graduation ceremony EAE Business School Barcelona, there was a demonstration of the traditional Catalan human castles, known as Castellers, who built three human towers and received a standing ovation from the whole audience.
