Born in 1980, Laia started his professional career as an athlete in the discipline of sailing, being part of the Spanish Olympic Sailing team from 1998 until 2012. Durign these years, she's achieved several international titles, including podiums in world and european championships and representing Spain in the Beijing 2008 Olympics in 470 class. She managed to study a law degree while sailing and graduated in 2004, combining her professional sports career with leading a family office in the consultancy field. Coming back from the Olympics, in 2008 she was appointed as Director of Barcelona International Sailing Center, a high performance training center located in Parc del Fòrum that based its offer in innovative solutions and data analysis for international sailing teams and major sailing events. (The lack of data analysis during her sports career impulsed her to promote its positioning). In 2014 the "startup call" arrived and (she) jumped into Smartsea, a company with headquarters in Barcelona and San Francisco that developed disruptive solutions for boat owners and amateur sailors, offering extended information and plug and play mobile tools to boost their sailing experiences. The startup won several awards, including IMPACT Accelerator, StartupBIT Awards and Barcelona Developers. In 2016 the Rafa Nadal Academy began to prepare the opening in Mallorca and Laia left the comfort zone of the nautical environment to get new learnings from another sport discipline, assuming the role of Operations Director at the Academy, managing the teams of Boarding, Technical office, Customer service and Health. Since then, the Academy has been growing in players, numbers and bases around the world, having 2 new tennis centers inaugurated in 2019 in Mexico and Greece and in Kuwait in 2020. The Academy still maintains the core and soul of the company in Manacor (Mallorca), and on 2019 Laia has achieved in Mallorca the peak of her career being promoted as co-director of education of her 12 months old son Joel. 🥰. Laia is currently leading at the Academy several I+D strategic projects like the RNA 360 software, a tool for tracking players overall development and performance on and off court with data analytics.
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High degree on sports law (Col.legi Advocats de Barcelona)
"Laia impressed me from the get go. I met her when she was a student at one of my ESADE classes and I could tell she had done her research in advance. She is passionate about digital and reliable at all times. So much so that as soon as I had the chance I hired her for La Twitertulia radio show. There, she showed her confidence stepping into new challenges without hesitation. Her positive attitude combines really well with her deep curiosity, her growing experience and her innate skills. If every team had a Laia, success would not be a matter of "if" but a matter of "when""
"Laia is a charming person, with a lot of work capacity and always brings joy and optimism, a fundamental basis for a team to function. I recommend it and I am sure it will far exceed the expectations of those who do not know it"
"Sharing a project with Laia is an incredibly stimulating intellectual exercise and a high burden of learning, both professionally, and personally. Laia has a special talent to make a world of ideas and actions, with no apparent connection between them, and multiply happen to form a homogeneous universe where everything fits perfectly. Balanced way thoroughness in her approach with a global and very current look on reality"
"Laia belongs to the core team of the academy since its opening. She’s a focused all round team worker and leader with abilities to function under pressure. Laia has organised from scratch several strategic areas of the academy including players desk-customer service, boarding, health and technical office teams. As a former athlete and world champion, She has a 360 vision of the business that permits her to act as a nexus between several departments and consolidate the level of service to players"
Laia has been sailing across several professional oceans, like every all round sailor and adventurous soul does. According to her team mates, those are the features that have accompanied her along the way. RELIABLE, TEAM WORKER, CONSISTENT, OPTIMISTIC, LEADER, ANALYTICAL, HONEST, PASIONAL, COHERENT