Pello Rodríguez Zabaleta will replace Iñigo Ucín as president of MONDRAGON, starting August 1, 2024

The Permanent Commission of the Cooperative Congress, chaired by Leire Mugerza and in which all MONDRAGON cooperatives are represented, has today agreed on the appointment of Pello Rodríguez Zabaleta as the next president of the General Council of the Corporation.

Pello Rodríguez Zabaleta was born in the town of Urretxu (Gipuzkoa) in 1975, married, with a son and a daughter, he has a degree in Higher Industrial Engineering, a mechanical specialty from the UPV and the École Nationale d'Arts et Métiers of Paris. In addition, he is a polyglot who is fluent in several languages: Basque, Spanish, English, French and he also speaks German.

Career

He began his professional career in 2000 at Danobat S. Coop. as a project manager and in the following six years he gained international experience in the subsidiaries in England (Newall) and Germany (Overbeck), until, in 2007, after returning from abroad, he took charge of the Lathe and Grinding business of the cooperative, later becoming general manager in 2013. Since 2015 he has been vice president of MONDRAGON and general director of the Capital Goods division, which brings together the machine tool and industrial automation cooperatives (Danobat, Soraluce, Ideko, Fagor Arrasate, Fagor Automation, Mondragon Assembly and Goimek, among others). Likewise, he is a member of the General Council and the Industrial Council of the Corporation; he participates in the Basque Council of Science, Innovation and Technology and is a member of the Board of Directors of Innobasque.

Rodríguez becomes president of the General Council of MONDRAGON, with extensive experience in the industrial and management field, and in his career he has always demonstrated a firm commitment to the cooperative model, with the necessary commitment to innovation and the competitiveness of business. "I take on this new challenge with great enthusiasm, MONDRAGON is my home and I am very proud to have been appointed to carry out this role, I trust that I will live up to the responsibility given to me," he said.

He will take over the presidency of the group on August 1. His main challenge will be the implementation of the Corporation's roadmap for the next four years, which is developed in the Socio-Business Policy 2025/2028, and will be presented at the MONDRAGON Congress next July.

The General Council is the executive body of the Corporation (comparable to a Board of Directors of a cooperative) and is made up of the general directorates of all the divisions of MONDRAGON in which the cooperatives are grouped, while the Permanent Commission is the body of institutional representation (similar to the Governing Council of a cooperative) and is made up of the presidencies and representatives of the cooperatives.