Pablo Ruiz Emparanza

IE Business School Global MBA

“Lifelong learner, results-driven, passionate about leading across cultures, continents, and industries.”

Age: 31

Hometown: Legazpi, Gipuzkoa, Spain

Fun fact about yourself: I once ran a supplier meeting in Bangkok with a Japanese and a Burmese counterpart — none of us spoke each other’s language, so we all just spoke Thai. The meeting went very smoothly, we closed the deal, and four years later we still keep that business relationship.

Undergraduate School and Degree:

Mondragon Unibertsitatea — Engineer’s Degree, Mechanical Engineering / Master of Science, Industrial Engineering

INSA Toulouse — Diplôme d’Ingénieur (BAC+5), Mechanical Engineering

Institut Clément Ader — Master of Technology (MTech), Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering

IE Business School — Global MBA

Where are you currently working? General Manager at Beauty Bijoux CO LTD (Bangkok, Thailand)

What achievements are you most proud of in your professional career? Managing a 200-employee company in a foreign country (Thailand) in a foreign language (Thai). It has been both a technical challenge — it is a considerable size manufacturing facility — and a managerial one, with only 3 employees speaking English. As a result, getting the word out and driving change while dealing with daily issues has been tough and rewarding.

Another accomplishment is developing a Convolutional Neural Network for the THEOS-2 satellite program with Airbus in Thailand. After pursuing a master’s degree in aeronautic materials and structures, I was handed the challenge of developing an image analysis tool to classify satellite imagery into 5 different categories. This led to the publication of a scientific paper and the project has been displayed in the Thai Aerospace Museum.

Why did you choose this school’s online MBA program? First, I joined IE University due to its reputation, innovative mindset and up-to-date program. The second reason is more sentimental. I have spent a third of my life outside Spain. During this time, I came to understand how strong the Spanish education system and its universities are. Pursuing my masters in Madrid was a way of connecting back to my roots and what made me the person I am today.

What was your favorite part of being in an online MBA program? The face-to-face trips have been one of the best parts of the master. The connections and friendships we have created during those weeks have been outstanding. The international F2F was also special — mixing different programs in a different country, all driven by the same purpose, made it unique.

How did your online MBA experience compare with your in-the-classroom experience as an undergraduate student? Academically speaking, I believe that in-person courses are more efficient and enriching; online can sometimes feel hard to follow and it requires more personal discipline.

What is your best piece of advice to an applicant for thriving in an online MBA program? First, the candidate must be very convinced about the choice. It is a very demanding program (work + study) which will affect every aspect of life for the length of it. My best piece of advice would be to work on a daily/weekly schedule to be able to deal with all the responsibilities.

How has your online MBA education helped you in your current job? I am now much more involved in global corporate decisions between the mother company and the subsidiary, especially in HR and Finance, where I did not take part before.

Did you earn a promotion while in the program or immediately after graduation? I did get a promotion during the program and another at the end, totaling around 30%. It is worth noting that the program was not financed by the company — it has been entirely a personal effort. This created additional pressure on negotiation as investing on myself to the benefit of the company must have some effect back.

Why did you pursue an online MBA program instead of a full-time residential or executive MBA program? I did not want to stop my professional career. I have been a full-time student for many years (combined with part-time jobs), and I understand that combined work-study is very possible and much more interesting than being only a student.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? We have had several subjects around AI in different fields (finance and operations, for example). We learned the uses, alternatives and benefits of this technology as well as working on hands-on projects using it.

Beyond the classroom, I have been applying AI directly in my manufacturing site. We have built our own user interfaces and database to track production, gold usage, and stone breakage — stepping away from a generic ERP that simply did not fit our reality. AI tools like Claude Code have helped us develop these systems faster and we are now building our own agent. The real change has been in how data is used. Before, only generic numbers were checked. Now we can go into detail — identifying underperformance, tracking losses, improving resource use, and catching issues that were previously invisible.

We are still in the very early steps, but that is what makes it exciting. The opportunities are enormous and I genuinely believe AI will improve our lives in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Number of Hours Per Week Spent on an Online MBA: On average, I did use around 20 hours per week. However, the load has not always been constant having some breaks (Christmas or Summer) and some high load episodes during projects and exams.

What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? I enjoy managing and leading corporations in any kind of industry. I like things and processes that are well-done and well-organized, and I trust very much in the teams I build to pursue these objectives. The bigger question is whether the corporation is built by me (entrepreneur) or by a third party (employed GM or CEO). I have no answer to this yet.

What I do know is that I want work to feel like something I enjoy, that merges with my personal life and does not take it away — some kind of symbiosis. This is how I give my 120%. I love seeing progress, quality and purpose in all aspects of life, and balancing the personal with the professional is what makes that possible.

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