Alfonso Martínez (Poncho)

IMD Business School

“My passion is to enjoy life and take the ones around me along.”

Hometown: Guadalajara, Mexico

Fun fact about yourself: I auditioned for a singing reality show!

Undergraduate School and Degree: BSc in Industrial Engineering from the University of Guadalajara

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Before enrolling at IMD, I served as the Deputy Sales Manager for IKEA Mexico. Joining as Employee #51, I was part of the core team responsible for the brand’s historic entry into the Mexican market.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? I interned as a Campus Strategist for CareerOS, a Barcelona-based startup, where I led the ‘IMD Networking Challenge.’ My mission was to gamify the outreach process to help my peers overcome the friction of job searching. By implementing a structured kickoff and weekly leaderboard updates, I created a ‘positive sense of urgency’ that resulted in 2,238 contacts saved and 110 messages sent by the cohort.

Where will you be working after graduation? I will be joining Eagle Strategy as a Director. It is a boutique firm dedicated to disrupting the traditional advisory model in Mexico. We provide a multidisciplinary blend of strategic, financial, and legal services specifically designed for enterprises and enterprising families. My role is to act as a ‘business partner’ to our clients, helping them navigate complex corporate restructurings and estate planning while ensuring their family legacy remains resilient across generations. It is the perfect platform to apply my ‘intrapreneurial’ mindset to solve high-stakes, real-world problems.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: I was honored to serve as the Co-Lead of the Consumer Industries Club, where I curated a high-impact calendar of over 10 major events. I leveraged my background to bridge the gap between classroom theory and industry reality, organizing deep dives into Hard Luxury (Breitling), Fashion (Chanel), and FMCG (P&G, Ferrero). Leading a visit to IKEA Singapore was incredibly special. It gave me the chance to bridge my past and present by showing my classmates where I used to work.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Being selected by my classmates as the class speaker is an honor I will never forget. Preparing the speech became one of the most meaningful assignments of my life: telling my own story while weaving it into the collective experience and energy of the class.

I carried with me the advice of my public speaking coach, Matt Wait: “Don’t tell the audience what to feel, make them feel.” I’m proud of the outcome, but what mattered most was seeing my classmates and the audience recognize themselves in the speech.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? My career has been defined by ‘intrapreneurship.’ Whether it was pioneering operations for a car leasing firm or joining IKEA Mexico as Employee #51 to launch their e-commerce and retail presence, I thrive in ‘day zero’ environments. The achievement I value most is the enduring professional ‘love’ and camaraderie I’ve earned from those around me. Bumping into colleagues ten years later and feeling that I left a positive mark while moving the business forward is my ultimate metric of success.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose IMD because of its unparalleled focus on the ‘human dimension’ of leadership. From my first interaction, it was clear that the institution prioritizes the character and quality of the individual as much as their business acumen. Specifically, the Leadership Stream, with its deeply personalized coaching, offered a rare opportunity to reflect on my past experiences to build a stronger foundation for the future. I knew that to become the leader I envision, I needed an environment that challenged me not just to manage a business, but to understand and master myself.”

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Omar Toulan! His generosity as a mentor is unparalleled. I particularly remember when he took the time to dive deep into my transversal skills reports, challenging me to stop simply ‘working in the business’ and start ‘working on the business.’ This shift in perspective: moving from tactical execution to systems thinking and strategic presence, has been a cornerstone of my growth. Beyond the classroom, we forged a friendship that I deeply value.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Accounting by Florian Hoos is unforgettable for me. He would open one of his sessions by saying, “This will be the most boring accounting session you will have ever have,” then he would take us by the hand to deeply understand a financial statement in the most down-to-earth and easy-to-understand way. Florian is an entrepreneur himself, so for the course activities, he challenged us as a group to develop great products and compete in a tough market, with the business’s financials at the center of everything we did.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite MBA tradition was attending the MBAT at HEC Paris. For our class, it represented a definitive ‘before and after’ moment in our collective camaraderie. While the sports were competitive, the highlight was our cohort winning the Cheering Award. To me, that trophy is a powerful testament to the IMD spirit: it reflected our ability to rally behind one another and proved exactly what we can achieve when we move as one synchronized team rather than a group of individuals.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? Looking back, I would have approached our final integrative exercise with a much stronger focus on team cohesion and process rather than just the output. My team struggled to align and, as a result, our performance was sub-optimal. However, that failure provided us with the most enduring MBA lesson: the art of ‘respectful disagreement.’ I learned that a team cannot move forward effectively until it creates a safe space for divergent ideas to converge into a single, unified strategy. It was a humbling masterclass in leadership that I now carry into every professional project.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school, and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? The most impactful ‘live case’ was a high-intensity, two-day Venture Capital simulation. Working alongside MBA colleagues and other assistants from the VC Asset Management course, we navigated the entire investment lifecycle: from raising LP capital and scouting deal flow to managing a startup portfolio and engineering successful exits. While the market was simulated, the pressure to deliver returns under volatile conditions was incredibly real. It was immersive learning at its best, teaching me that VC isn’t just about picking winners; it’s about disciplined risk management and the ability to pivot strategy in real time.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? A magic combination of city, lake, mountains, vineyards, and forests. It can’t get better than that!

What business leader do you admire most? The business leader I admire most is my grandfather, Alfonso, who passed away in 2023 at 102. He was a masterclass in discipline, humility, and long-term vision. He taught me that extraordinary success doesn’t require reinventing the wheel; rather, it is built through the compound interest of consistency and patience. Beyond his financial acumen and commitment to saving, he was perfectly congruent with his values, ensuring that his professional life never compromised his devotion to his family. He proved to me that true leadership is about having your priorities in order and maintaining the integrity to stay the course for a lifetime.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? While AI is embedded across the IMD syllabus, the most significant insight came during our Future Lab in Singapore. In an Analytics bootcamp led by Prof. Amit Joshi, we were challenged to take raw data through the entire lifecycle: cleaning, programming, and generating insights for a user-facing web interface. Having cleaned data manually earlier in my career, I saw firsthand how AI compresses the data-prep cycle by orders of magnitude. This shift is transformative; it allows leaders to move past the ‘drudgery’ of data processing and spend their energy on strategic interpretation. Seeing how different teams leveraged the same AI to reach unique conclusions made it clear that AI is an amplifier for infinite creative possibilities.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I deeply admire Somerset Jarvis. She is an incredibly brave and sharp leader who maintained an impressive level of commitment throughout the entire program. I never once saw her lose her temper, even under the highest pressure. Somerset is a true high achiever who balances diverse talents; she not only brought home medals from the MBAT Olympics but also won the Venture Award. Her winning pitch, focused on reducing buildings’ carbon footprint, perfectly demonstrated her ability to combine commercial viability with a meaningful global impact.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

1. I believe professional success is unsustainable without personal integrity. My top priority is to prove that one can reach the pinnacle of their career while remaining a dedicated, present husband and father. To me, leadership starts at home.

2. I aim to act as a strategic catalyst for members of entrepreneurial families. My goal is to help them bridge the gap between their heritage and their individual purpose, unlocking their full potential.

What made Alonso such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“Alfonso (Poncho) Martinez is a truly outstanding individual. In my nearly 30 years as a professor, one only sees such individuals every now and then. I had the great pleasure of having Poncho in the IMD MBA Program during my tenure as Dean of the MBA in 2025. Poncho left his mark not only on the members of his class but the institution as a whole and me personally.

He was selected by his classmates to represent them as their graduation speaker, an honor which attests to the impact Poncho had on his classmates. He is one of the most honorable individuals I have ever met and that is only the first of many traits. He has an unparalleled level of empathy, which allows him to be an amazing people person. He knows how to build genuine relationships and does so with a natural ease that cannot be learned.

The word networker sometimes has a negative connotation, but Poncho is great at connecting people…he did this multiple times to help his classmates on the job market even while he was searching. When you talk to Poncho, he is fully engaged. He truly cares and that allows him to be a true leader. Combined with his analytical insights, his organizational skills, and his communication abilities, he really is the complete package.

Poncho always showed up with a positive and constructive attitude despite the pressures he was experiencing…undertaking an MBA as a new father…We are all proud to see him excelling already in his new role as a company Director back in Mexico. I know he has an amazing career in store and look forward to following the impact he will continue to have. I cannot recommend him enough.”

Omar Toulan
Professor of Strategy and International Management

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