Restless by nature, Teresa Ponce de Leão, considers this to have been one of the characteristics that led her to reach the position she occupies today. Founder of LNEG, the current President of the Board of Directors, was based on courage, perseverance, calm and patience to take the steps she defined on her path.
AESE alumna in the AMEG Program – Advanced Management in Energy, she faces the future with optimism and aspires to pursue an international career.
What are the main milestones in your professional career, which contributed to reaching the position of President of the Board of Directors of LNEG?
What had the most influence on my trajectory was, firstly, my permanent restlessness, the non-complacency, the interest from an early age in European issues, in particular their impact on research management, and the participation in various working groups in the European Commission (EC). This close collaboration with the EC, whether in research projects, evaluation processes, or advisory groups, allowed me to leave the strictly university and comfort circle and, in the end, to have visibility.
Subsequently, I was invited as vice-president for research at INETI (an institute with many scientific skills, from the food industry, through the pharmaceutical industry to energy). With the extinction of this institute I was responsible for the reorganization of the different scientific areas, participating very actively in the distribution of competences (human resources, equipment and projects) by the related laboratories. After this work, I ended up being invited to lead the institute that brought together energy and geology and to found LNEG.
What were your main achievements?
To have been able to smoothly coordinate the extinction of INETI and to build a LNEG, on par with its peers, capable of functioning as a true Research and Technology Operator (RTO), capable of supporting public policies and transferring knowledge to society.
What are the main lessons that make you the leader you are today?
Having had the courage to face difficult situations and fight to overcome them, having the perseverance to accept that we do not always achieve what is obvious but that with patience it is conquered and being calm in situations of apparent lack of control, calm allows us to reason in a more cerebral and less emotional way.
What values do you govern yourself by and that you transmit to your teams?
To be a public service and have to give back to society what it gives us and apply ourselves in our work always guided by the principles of ethics. To be a team, which rows in a coordinated way and in which all rowers count.
If you could go back in time, what would you do differently?
He had fought for international professional experience
Professionally, how do you see yourself in 5 years?
Perhaps in an international experience.
