Cabinet Expert at Commissioner Gabriel cabinet for Innovation, Research, Education, Culture and Youth, European Commission

Policy Fellow Alum, Centre for Science and Policy

Isidro is the Cabinet Expert of Commissioner Gabriel for Innovation, research, Education, culture and Youth at the European Commission. He has been a senior official at the European Commission since 2001 with responsibilities such as head of Startup Europe for 9 years and Deputy head of Innovation Ecosystems at the European Innovation Council.

From 2015 to 2019 Isidro was also nominated “Thought Leader at United Nations ITU Agency”, and is member of several advisory boards to international networks of startups. He combines his professional activities with academic activities such as being “Cambridge University CSAP Continuing Fellow”, visiting lecturer to CEPADE (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid) and writing books and papers which are included as citations by hundreds of academics.

After graduating as an Engineer from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, he set up two Innovative SMEs on software business in the Tech AgriFood area before becoming a strategy advisor to CEOs of large corporations. Afterwards he became director in charge of IT and Change Management Projects in a large corporation (Atos Origin). In 2001 he moved into the public sector where he has been mainly working on strategy and innovation within the European Commission.

Isidro’s objectives as a CSaP Continuing Fellow are to share views on policy measures to strengthen the environment for startups in Europe; to learn new ways of policy making better adapted to an era of extremely rapid change that characterise the tech startups; to access international knowledge and best practices related to policies for tech startups; and to share knowledge on the characteristics of this new economy around fast moving startups.

To read about Isidro's experience as a Policy Fellow in Cambridge see here.