BOARD OF DIRECTORS RENEWAL: FOUR FEMALE DIRECTORS AT KNOW HUB CHILE

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS RENEWAL: FOUR FEMALE DIRECTORS AT KNOW HUB CHILE

Two outside female directors coming from key areas join the corporation: a successful technology-based entrepreneur and a senior executive of a private company. Besides, the Board chose two new female directors representing partner institutions, University of Los Lagos and Catholic University of Maule. Now, 44% of the members of this governance body are women.

Four new female directors joined Know Hub Chile Board of Directors. Now, women’s representation reaches 44%, a big difference with the former Board, which included no women.

“As an institution linked with innovation, Know Hub Chile is permanently seeking for diversity, and certainly a relevant aspect to achieve it is gender representativeness, and as a corporation, we were in debt in this sense”, Know Hub Chile Executive Director Javier Ramírez comments.

Altogether, the Board of Directors consists of nine members, six of the partner institutions and three outside directors. During the last assembly, two outside female directors joined Know Hub Chile: Carolina Arce, co-founder of U-planner digital company, and Patricia Sabag Zarruk, senior executive and director of several institutions, such as Hortifrut and Canontex, the most relevant companies in our country in fresh berries and textiles respectively.

Moreover, the 11 partners chose two new female directors to be represented: Paola Ballerino Contreras, Innovation and Technology Transfer Director at University of Los Lagos and María Teresa Muñoz Quezada, Vice President for Research and Post Graduate Studies at Catholic University of Maule (UCM, in Spanish).

Carolina Arce is co-founder of U-planner, technology company offering solutions based on their own mathematical algorithms and Artificial Intelligence for data analysis of higher education institutions. She is currently vice president for North America of this company that offers, among other services, U-retention for student retention.

About her motivations to join the Board, Arce comments: “We have advantages that would allow us to take a huge step in the amount of technology-based startups which will develop a positive contribution to the world, high-level employment enabling the country to grow in a sustainable way. Know Hub accelerates that leap and that’s the future I want to see for Chile, and the one I’m interested in contributing to”.

With her wide experience in the creation of technology-based startups, Arce knows about the difficulties tackled by these entrepreneurships in their early years: “That’s why the support given by Know Hub through proven methodology, adjusted to Chilean reality, enables the founders to get their idea and research out of the laboratory, take it to a product and launch it to market successfully. Besides, the connection Know Hub Chile has with the United States, through University of California Riverside, opens access to people and investors with extensive experience in supporting technology-based startups, accelerating the process for entrepreneurs”.

 

Permanent support

 While Patricia Sabag brings to the Board her extensive experience as a frontline executive and director of big companies “in which the opportunity to identify, analyze and execute problems-solutions have been a crucial factor for business success. And this experience can contribute in the transition of a scientific-technological research transfer of result to the real world”, reflects Sabag.

And then she adds: “I believe institutions like Know Hub Chile play a strategic and fundamental role in supporting scientific-technological transfer of solutions to the community. I envisage them as part of the permanent support research institutions must have. The relationship University-productive sector-Private-State is essential to achieve an improvement in our indices of research transfer to the citizens, together with the subsequent improvement in their life quality”.

María Teresa Muñoz considers that it’s “very positive that more spaces are open for women to express our viewpoints. But it’s just as important to combine giving opportunities with looking for those spaces. That’s why, when looking at Know Hub Ignition results last year, I felt the need to collaborate. Then I thought I wanted to be in the Board of Directors and offer myself for the position. That’s the most participative part”.

Paola Ballerino acknowledges these cultural changes enabling women to occupy strategic positions: “We used to hide family issues, but not anymore, it’s placed value on it. During the pandemic, housework or family care, which we always make compatible with work, have become especially visible now, but weren’t so clear before.”

And she adds, “I absolutely don’t think that men and women are equal, and it’s precisely that difference what enriches a group. I think women have a lot to contribute to Know Hub Chile, as we have different sensitivities, a different way of seeing things which widens another perspective even when dealing with technology. I think it’s really important that this change happened spontaneously”.

 

“A more successful and productive stage”

Know Hub Chile is a young institution, born on January 23, 2018. Its first Board of Directors president is Flavio Salazar, Vice President for Research and Development at University of Chile.

About the evolution of the corporation in this time, Dr. Salazar believes that “we’ve been going from a more theoretical version of what an entity like Know Hub should be, into an instrument closer to reality. The programmes which have been boosted and become highly successful in the promotion of technology transfer and entrepreneurship, express what we have been learning. This new Board begins with a lot of interest from partners and privates, and I think that a much more productive and successful stage than the former one is to be outlined”, he concludes.

Javier Ramírez, Know Hub Chile Executive Director concludes expressing his “sincerest acknowledges to our partner institutions’ outgoing directors, who represented the University of Bio-Bio and the National Agriculture Research Institute (INIA, in Spanish), who took part in the first Know Hub Chile Board of Directors. Their job was essential when forming our corporation and swift implementation. Also, thanks to Jean Jacques Duhart and Jorge Nitsche, who provided their private world vision”.

 

Know Hub Chile Board of Directors is formed as follows:

 

Directors representing partners

Institution Holder Alternate
U. Austral Hans Richter Germán Rehren
UC Temuco Carlos Lüders Daniel Huenufil
U. Talca Michel Leporati Marco Yáñez
U. de Chile Flavio Salazar Carlos Saffie
U. de Los Lagos Paola Ballerino Sandra Ríos
UC del Maule Mª Teresa Muñoz Fabiola Loyola

 

Independent Directors

Holder Alternate
Ramón Molina Víctor Pérez
Carolina Arce Sofía Ramírez
Patricia Sabag Susana Oviedo