Laura Olcina knows very well that the avant-garde is not at odds with tradition, so this economist, who has been head of the Institute of Technological Informatics (ITI) for twenty years, does not miss an opportunity. The time to practice the Valencian jota, a dance Originally from the 14th century, also serves to do some sport.
Dancing jotas is one of the singularities in the life of Olcina, the daughter of an insurance broker and a shipping agent who has turned her professional career into record production. Born in Valencia in 1973, the managing director of ITI has been educated at the French High School since the age of three, and arrived at university with suspicion, almost without further shock from his parents’ divorce: “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, and thinking about export issues, I turned to Economy» .
On the first day of school, he discovered the possibility of obtaining a double degree in Spain and France, and after passing the exams he embarked on the “experimental program” that would open the doors of the neighboring country to him.
When I finished my degree, “I interned at a French industrial maintenance company and then went to a technology center near Marseille that specializes in harsh environments like nuclear or aerospace,” he recalls. And in 1996 he returns to Valencia.
To fulfill his promise to his mother, he receives a grant from Generalitat to work in industrial promotion at Impiva, a public institution that supports SMEs. His aim was to save a year to go to England to “get to know other countries”, but the experience took half a year longer and he was offered a fellowship for ITI in 1998. Here it is gone. Of course, at that time she had met another economist intern at Impiva, who is now her husband and father of her two children, ages 17 and 15.
Reference
ITI, which Olcina describes as the “Spanish reference center in the field of Information and Communication Technologies”, could not reach its current size with more than 260 employees, more than 250 subsidiaries, more than 360 customers. Different sectors across Spain and abroad and more than 150 R&D projects per year “and they offered me a contract if I had a project that would allow them to pay me my salary.” He stayed in high school, was hired permanently six months later, and was promoted to the general manager he has today four years later in 2002. In a way, his position is an anomaly in the industry, because “the directors of institutes of technology are often scientists,” he says, much more economists in the world of computer scientists, before showing some surprise in his case.
Education
Laura Olcina assures that many talents are lacking in the ICT sector due to the «lack of education. There are not enough university graduates in the society and there is a deficit”, so there is no labor problem after finishing this profession. The director of the ITI also encourages women to study in these disciplines, as these are occupations that allow teleworking and thus “facilitating greater reconciliation of work and family life”.
Despite this, and precisely because of his position in the aforementioned non-profit organization, Olcina assures that he does not have excessive free time between his professions at the ITI and the existing associations of technological institutes in the Community of Valencia and Spain. Leisure ensures that she is occupied with her children and friends, “what I appreciate most” and, as the saying goes, belonging to a Valencian jota dance troupe. If he can, he’ll also take a trip to golf.
The managing director of the Institute for Technological Informatics (ITI) admits that he spends little time reading and digging into the books for his PhD in data economics, where he restarted everything he had. Laura Olcina believes technology is “out there and you need to know about it and manage it carefully. Neither good nor bad. They are people who are good or bad.