Rosa Lavín

Lavín was born on 4 November 1973 in Sestao, Biscay, Basque Country (Spain). She attended the Merciful Love School (Colegio Amor Misericordioso) in Sestao. The school is a Basque private Catholic school, belonging to the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of Merciful Love.^{[citation needed]} She graduated from the University of the Basque Country with a licenciate degree in economics and business administration. Later, she completed a postgraduate degree in social economy, cooperative companies and labor companies also at the University of the Basque Country.^[18] She also completed the Executive Programme in Financial Management (PEDF) at the Deusto Business School of the University of Deusto.^[19]

Lavín also studied music and piano at the Municipal Conservatory of Sestao and later at the Municipal Conservatory of Bilbao, where she studied piano, which made it compatible with her university degree in economics.^[20]

In 1998, she started working at "SSI Group". She is currently the economic-financial director (CFO), director and vice president of the company Grupo SSI.^[21][22][14] She is also a member of the board of directors of the Elkar-Lan company, of the HAZIBIDE Seed Capital Company and of the SEED CAPITAL Venture Capital Company.^[14]

She is a member of different business organizations and federations of social economy companies. In 2019, she was elected president of the Federation of Cooperative Companies of the Basque Country (ERKIDE), being the first woman to hold the position.^[23][24][25] In 2020, ERKIDE became part of the Confederation of Cooperative Companies of Euskadi.

In addition, since 2015, Lavín has been the president of the Basque Social Economy Network (EGES), the platform that brings together all the social economy companies in the Basque Country and which is made up of the Confederation of Cooperative Companies of the Basque Country, the Association of Labour Companies of the Basque Country (ASLE), Special Employment Centres of the Basque Country (EHLABE), the Alternative and Solidarity Economy Network (REAS EUSKADI), the Social Integration Companies of the Basque Country (GIZATEA) and the Basque Confederation of Foundations (FUNKO).^{[26][27][28][29]}

In 2015, Lavín was elected president of the Confederation of Cooperative Companies of Euskadi, the Basque social economy business community,^[30] becoming the first woman to hold this position since its creation in 1996.^[31]

In this way, she presides over one of the two Basque employers' organizations (the other is the Basque Business Confederation ConfeBasque), which includes banking entities, credit companies, labor, associated work and others, among them the largest is the Mondragon Corporation.^[32]

The Confederation of Cooperative Companies of Euskadi represents all the companies of social economy in the Basque Country (it brings together almost two thousand companies), as it does the Spanish Confederation of Social Economy Companies in Spain or the Social Economy Europe in Europe.^{[33][34][35][36][37][38]}

She has appeared several times in the Basque Parliament, especially with the elaboration of the new law of cooperatives of the year 2019.^[39][40][41] She is a member of the Basque government agency Superior Council of Cooperative Companies of Euskadi and also of other councils and economic-business commissions of the Basque Government.^{[42][43][44][45][46][47][48]}

In 2022, at the presentation of the Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) at the Palace of Moncloa (Madrid), together with Pedro Sánchez, Nadia Calviño and Yolanda Díaz, she defended the participation of cooperative companies in the elaboration of public policies.^[49][50]

In addition, Lavín is member of the board of directors of the Spanish Confederation of Social Economy Companies (CEPES), the Spanish employers' organization.^[9][10]

She is a member of the Working Group of Women Leaders of the Social Economy, launched in 2023 by the second vice president and Minister of Labor and Social Economy of the Government of Spain Yolanda Díaz,^[15] a group of 26 women leaders in the social economy for the implementation of advances in gender equality in the social economy.^[15][16]

In 2015, when she was appointed president of the Confederation of Cooperative Companies of Euskadi, she became the first woman to lead a business organization in the Basque Country and also one of the first women to lead an employers' association in Spain.^[51]

She lives in Sestao. She is married and has two children.^{[citation needed]}

• 2023, Selected as one of the Women Leaders in the Social Economy in Spain by the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy^[52][53]

• Carmen Marcuello Servós (ed.), Carmen Barragán Mendoza (ed.), Eliane Navarro Rosandiski (ed.), Juan Fernando Álvarez Rodríguez (ed.). Women, Cooperativism, and Social Economy in Spain and Latin America. International Center for Research and Information on the Public, Social, and Cooperative Economy, CIRIEC-Spain (University of Valencia). Valencia. Spain. 2021.^[54][55]

• Confederation of Cooperative Companies of the Basque Country
• Mondragon Corporation
• Iñigo Ucín
• Ana Botín