NEW TRENDS LAB
YOUNG IDEAS, YOUNG TALENT
Director
Hi, I’m Alberto Saiz Garitaonandia. I’ve always had a nervous, nonconformist mindset, and I think that’s one of the elements that prompted me to create NTL.
I have a degree in Law and Political Science and a Doctor of Law from the UPV. In addition, I did an Executive MBA at Deusto Business School, specialized courses in Innovation at INSEAD, France, and Global Perspective at Fordham University, USA. Throughout my academic life, I’ve visited several foreign universities and enriched myself with the life of those universities, which has been crucial to the idea of the NTL: from the Fellowship that I enjoyed at the University of Cambridge (UK) in the course of 2021-2022 to the stays I certainly made at Stanford University (USA) and its innovative environment, they’ve all had a huge impact on my vision and understanding of the world.
As a teacher, I always try to convey not only knowledge, but a certain critical spirit that helps students in their personal and professional future. Maybe that’s why I joined the Eragin program at the time. This program was launched by the UPV to train experts on the method of the case, and eventually I was part of the team of educators. My visit to the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, for the Case Teaching Workshop, together with professors Erskine and Leenders, is also from that time. In this sense, I think of the seminars I took in class with writer Lorenzo Silva, after reading some of his police novels, which helped me to associate my fondness for reading with university teaching.
For more than eight years (2013-2021) I had an enriching and intense experience as Director of the Basque Government, especially in the Central Legal Service. There I could see the great complexity and problematic nature of a great institution, as well as the need and obstacles to adapting to the changes that you may sometimes encounter. It seems to me that this period outside of college and that other experience have also been a lever for creating the ideas and motivations behind NTL.