Speakers
Federico Steinberg
Federico Steinberg is the Prince of Asturias Chair at Georgetown University and a Senior Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute. He is widely recognized as one of Europe’s most authoritative voices on geopolitics and international economics.
Between 2019 and 2024, he served as Special Advisor to Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission. In this role, he helped shape the European response to some of the greatest geopolitical challenges of the last decade.
He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Advisory Council of the Ministry of Economy of the Government of Spain. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics (LSE), and an MA in International Relations from Columbia University (New York).
Álvaro Sanmartín
Ranked first in his class as a State Economist (Economista del Estado), Álvaro Sanmartín served as Director General for Macroeconomic Analysis and International Economics at the Spanish Ministry of Economy. In this position, he held direct responsibility for national economic forecasting and relations with the IMF, the ECB, and the World Bank.
Following his tenure in the public sector, he built a career in the private sector, which included roles at KPMG Advisory and Amchor Investment Strategies. He is currently a founding partner and co-CEO of CIRCULAR, a broker-dealer (agencia de valores) specializing in the management of global investment funds backed by a solid macroeconomic foundation.
Richard Benjamins
Richard Benjamins is one of the most internationally recognized experts in artificial intelligence, with a career that bridges academic research, corporate strategy, and the global debate on ethics.
He was the Chief Responsible AI Officer at Telefónica and the founder of its “AI for Society and Environment” initiative. He currently serves as the CEO of OdiseIA. In addition to being an external advisor to the European Parliament’s AI Observatory, he collaborates with MIT-Sloan, UNESCO’s Business Council for AI, and the Vatican’s Digital Culture Center.
He holds a PhD in Cognitive Science, has authored over 150 scientific publications, and has written influential books such as The Myth of the Algorithm (El mito del algoritmo) and A Data-Driven Company.
Belén Carreño Bravo
(Oviedo, 1976) Belén is an economic journalist at El País and the author of the weekly newsletter Inteligencia Económica. She previously served as chief correspondent for Reuters in Spain. In 2024, she was recognized as Best Financial Journalist by the Association of Economic Journalists (APIE). She was Head of the Economy Desk at eldiario.es, a media outlet she helped found. She broke the ‘Tarjetas Black’ case, one of the biggest financial scandals in Spain.
Carreño has worked in the economics sections of the newspaper Público, where she was part of the founding team, as well as Expansión and the EFE News Agency. Earlier in her career, she worked at the United Nations and at the Spanish Commercial Office in New York through an ICEX program.
She is a contributor to radio and television. Her account on the social network X has been named one of the most influential in Spain in the field of economics.
She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and Communication from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Bachelor’s degree in Information Sciences from the Pontifical University of Salamanca. She is the mother of two daughters.
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