After Elena’s class wrapped up, we caught up with her over coffee in the Barcelona Campus lounge for a quick conversation about her teaching approach.

🔹Interviewer: You’re known within our school for bringing out the best in our students. What strategies do you use to help students realize their potential and develop their confidence?

Elena: I have a very engaging approach to the classroom. We have a lot of discussions and we allow [students] to talk about different subjects, and that gives students an opportunity to discuss what’s interesting for them. So it shows me what is of interest, what are their skills, where the interest is lying, where is the experience. And so I can modify as we speak certain case studies to bring out more of their interest, certain exercises maybe that can help them develop that a little bit more.

So I gauge it a little bit in what’s happening in the classroom right away. I also have a variety of different exercises they do. With today’s tools, it gets even easier. And so they get to be experiential. They get to have conversations. They have to have self-reflection. They have to have practical things. They can come up with case studies. They can research case studies. So it allows them different ways of learning, a variety of different learning strategies.

🔹I.: You’ve led companies through restructuring, startup growth, and financial transformation. How does your hands-on business experience shape the way you teach in the classroom?

Elena: I’m a practitioner. I was looking for the right word. I’m a practical person. I believe in an applied approach to business subjects. And what I bring into the classroom is real-life experience. What happens in real life, not in theory, how it’s written in the books of 15 years ago, or big Harvard case studies of the companies we don’t—most of us don’t ever get to touch—but how does it happen in the real world? What do real people struggle with? How does this specific economic subject touch the real owners with real problems, with real challenges, with real resources?

So students tend to love this a lot because it’s a lot more tangible. They can touch it. A lot of them come from business families. Not most, but a lot of their parents have been in business. They almost start to see the other side of their parents a little bit as well. For a lot of them, it dismisses some of the illusions they have about the business. For others, it gives them more inspiration. I’ve had people who wanted to do a business, they go, “Oh, I didn’t realize it’s going to be this hard.” And I’ve had others that go, “Oh, I thought I’m not a business person. But the way this was brought to me, maybe I can actually have a perspective on this. And maybe I can do something that’s not too crazy, but a lot of practical business.” So it gives them a chance to touch the real world.

🔹I.: As a certified executive and organizational coach, how do you use coaching techniques to support student development both academically and personally?

Elena: I bring group coaching into the classrooms mildly. It depends on the class. Sometimes it’s not so mild. In this school specifically, I teach classes that don’t require a lot of group coaching. If I teach a change management class, if I teach entrepreneurship, I use it a lot when we do practical entrepreneurship courses, applied entrepreneurship courses, building a startup, kind of like that. That requires a lot of self-reflection, self-development, group dynamics, working in a team, a lot of group work.

And so I bring it as a technique to strengthen the process with which we work. A lot of self-reflection exercises combined with business cases. I’ve had a hit-and-miss response to that in a sense that we’re trained in schools in general—oh, everything has to be theoretical, approved, written by big, I don’t know, companies, publications and everything else. And so self-reflection has no place to be in a business school. But that’s not true because most theories in business are quite limited.

And we keep repeating them and repeating them and repeating them, but quite a lot of this has to do with the person who is doing it and their perspective. And so self-reflection helps for the students to develop as well as the group develop and subject development together.

🔹I.: You specialize in systems thinking and process improvement. How do you help students connect academic concepts with the complexities of real-world business?

Elena: I wouldn’t call myself specializing in systems thinking, but they lack understanding of systems very often, whereas education these days and business education these days and promotion in the business world out there is so specialization-based that we learn to have separate—a lot of separate knowledges—but we don’t know how they work together. And so a lot of times what we do in the classroom, we understand what the system actually does and how the system works. And once you change one part of the system, how it affects everything else. So I’m really trying to bring a bigger picture, more complex way of looking at things into the classroom where they can see how things affect each other.

🔹I.: For some advice for fellow educators. So for business faculty colleagues aiming to engage students more deeply, what tools, mindsets, or strategies would you recommend?

Elena: I’m a big believer that education these days is an entertainment business. We’re in show business. I’m sorry. Yeah, this is show business. Because the information is available. Education used to be about providing information for the students to get access to the information. A few years ago, we were able to Google anything in half an hour. Today, we can ChatGPT and Perplexity everything in a minute and a half. So information is available. We used to teach analytical skills—what to do with information later on. But even today, basic analytical skills could be done for somebody else.

So we’re really teaching students how to apply their brain in a more complex way, which is not necessarily what they’re used to. And we need to do it in a way where it keeps their attention going, because when they get bored, they go, “Oh, I know this information,” and then they sidetrack. So our job as educators is really—it’s showtime. We need to do quite a lot of different things and have discussions that are uncomfortable. It’s not just about reading the subjects. It’s not about just lecturing. It has to have feedback and cold interest, so that’s one thing.

Another thing is open-mindedness for sure. Besides the fact that we’re an international business school with different nationalities and everything else, it’s what they want to talk about and the perspectives. Although we are international, very often we as educators tend to stick to what is known to us and our perspectives and our sometimes even political views and business views. And the reality is they come from different worlds and in their worlds business looks different and politics looks different. And I find it ethical to give it space and time to look at things from their perspective as well. Yes, we are a Western European school and there is an influence in that, but ultimately the open-mindedness definitely would help.

And then definitely open-mindedness to the learning styles. Okay. Neurodivergency used to be a one-off thing, but today we see it a lot more and more and more in the classroom as the norm. And so the ability to give them different ways of learning between audio learning, visual learning, experiential learning, conversational learning, is definitely very important. I understand that people get sidetracked very often—oh, we shouldn’t use phones, we shouldn’t use computers.

The reality of today’s world is they take notes on their phones and computers and they get sidetracked while they’re note-taking. So there are a lot of audio perceivers who need to have their hands and eyes busy because they’re listening better this way. And so there are so many intricacies that in old forms of education, more traditional, we think, “Oh, it’s a disruption and disrespect.” [But they need] to focus more sitting at the table. I always start the classroom saying, “Listen, you can sit at the table, on the table, off the table, on the floor, standing, do whatever works for you.” Because quite honestly, with a lot of people in today’s world, ADHD movement, they want to move around, they can’t sit still for three hours. It’s a cultural thing as well.

So there are so many little things that can help the environment to be more engaging. It helps them to relax. And if they’re relaxed, they have to have more engaging conversations. They’re bringing the subjects they’re interested in there, so engagement comes on their end. So I think being open-minded to that would also be very, very helpful. It’s difficult for the educator, especially if you’re not just trained, but if you’re not experienced in this, or if you haven’t experienced it yourself, but it helps students.

And the timing there is—the scheduling has to fit what students need. Because we often fit it to what we think is right and we fit it to the work schedules that they’re going to have in the future. But the reality is most of the bachelor students are teenagers. And teenagers need different schedules because they function differently. Because yes, they party. Yes, they have a life out there. And that’s part of their learning experience—to actually have a life outside of school. They come to these business schools to have a full experience. And so pushing one thing or another is actually taken away from their experience.

And having consideration that they don’t read anymore. We would love them to, but that’s the reality. Makes me sad because I’m a reader. And yes, occasionally I would push a book here and there, but the reality is they don’t. So whatever we put in the material and make things happen, we expect them to do things outside, but they do the bare minimum.

So somehow restructuring it where it fits so it doesn’t feel overwhelming would be also helpful.

🔹I.: Wow, that’s a lot of tips.

Elena: No, for sure. When it’s your class here, the energy on campus is actually different. You get that buzzing of people talking and, you know, they’re in little groups doing their thing. So it’s very interesting to see, you know, how different professors have different effects. And there’s also different subjects. I mean, this is, for example, what you see here is a business plan class. There’s quite a lot of—how do I teach them to build a business? I mean, they’re writing a business plan as a group throughout 30 hours. They need to do a lot of work outside of the classroom because obviously they’re not going to write the whole thing. But I take them step by step through the process, so there’s a lot of group work.

And in other classes, there’s a lot more individual reflection and discussions where there’s not as much group work needed or outside-of-the-classroom group work needed. So it also depends on the class. If they teach them accounting, we were just looking at the projections today, so if they teach them accounting, it’s a little bit different perspective. So yeah, the class has—the subject has a say in how the dynamics go as well. Not everything is applicable in every classroom.

🔹I.: Thank you. Well, yes, you’re one of the favorites on campus. So a lot of people flock to your classes. I mean, you have a full class now as well. How’s that? Do you prefer full class?

Elena: Yeah, I prefer full class. It gets a bit loud, but I prefer full class. I’m quite aware that a lot of them—I keep joking that you guys should put a limit on how many of my classes they take because of the content that keeps rotating. They need a variety of classes, but I know that in quite a few cases they go, “Oh, we just see your name, I don’t care what the class is. We just registered.” So I’ve had that. And this is the reality of the style—if the style fits, it fits. And if it doesn’t, because it’s somebody very academic, coming from a very traditional background, very traditional schooling, I would say my style definitely doesn’t fit, but maybe it’s not even the school style fits because they are used to quite a different approach to schooling. So they might be needing more traditional universities and a more traditional approach with more traditional classes with less projects and less work as well, and that’s very important to understand. People do come here for experience. They come to UIBS specifically for the ability to switch campuses as an experience. I’ve seen that quite a lot.

🔹I.: Yeah, for sure. We have a lot of students coming and going from all over the place, so it creates a very different dynamic. It’s interesting to see. And one last question. Looking ahead, with your DPhil research and your current academic pursuits, what innovative ideas are you planning to bring into your teaching next?

Elena: What am I planning to bring? I don’t know. Every project that I work on, because teaching is just part of what I do—I’m an entrepreneur with several projects going at the same time in different stages. So every challenge that I have, I always bring into the classroom. Every project I have, I’ve had interns working for me from different schools, including yours, for all the years that I’ve been teaching on and off. Because for us, as an entrepreneur, you’re always limited in resources. And so students actually taught me that it’s a good idea to have unpaid internships. I was very close-minded to it, coming from a US background and working full-time to support myself through my education. I was like, “I can’t do this to students,” but I’ve realized they taught me that, “Hey, no, we need experience.” So I’ve relearned as an entrepreneur, and so I often bring the students to give them a chance to do something realistic, something tangible, something exciting or not, but something that is real world. So every challenge I have, I always bring into the classrooms.

We are fundraising right now. We’re getting an investor. We have just shifted from one strategy to another. And hopefully my business projects keep growing and advancing so I can bring it more into the classroom from the content perspective as well as engaging the students.

And we have—I’ve been teaching for almost eight years and since then I have been hired—and one of our companies has 25% of the workforce is MIAC students.

🔹I.: Oh, that’s pretty high.

Elena: So, yeah, it’s—and they’ve stuck with us and we had a few more rotations, but those are one of our key people in this company, part of our dream team. So, yeah, you never know which way it works. I really try to engage in this. A big part of my research is also incubation of under-resourced entrepreneurs and so I’ve had this dream for a while and I’ve been trying to bring it slowly but surely in different formats and it has been working to develop an incubator within the school and help entrepreneurs to actually go and build a business throughout a period of time. We’ve tried it separately as a set of classes where they build it. We’ve tried to separate classrooms. We’ve tried it as a whole process. I am fundraising for a fund right now to be able to do it.

So, yeah, there’s quite a lot of things that I’m working on that already bring it to the classroom.

I don’t know if it’s going to change in the future, but I already do. I just hope I keep doing it.

🔹I.: And can you tell us a little bit about your businesses?

Elena: So my partner and I have—so the oldest business we have is the accounting bookkeeping practice. And so we’ve been franchising it now. It started off as just a practice where we’re doing financial statements for small to medium-sized businesses, and now we’re franchising. So we have 14 franchises as of today in the United States [planning] to get to 100 and then exit in a few years.

🔹I.: Is this the business where you have all the…

Elena: It’s the business where I have all the workforce at the moment, yes. But they started off in other places as interns and then they kind of stuck with the business. One of them has developed into director level and other students—we have just promoted them into the manager. The third one, we graduated, we needed a manager. I knew it was a bright student and I’m like, “I’m just going to drop you in this and if you survive, you survive.” So there’s a lot of difference—I had some others that are in much more junior roles, so there’s quite a lot of that.

I am building a business—I’ve built a business diagnostics, we’re testing it right now. It’s based on my academic research. I’m fundraising for a fund for under-resourced entrepreneurs. It is. It is. And so that’s why when I come into the classroom, when it comes to entrepreneurship, I go, “I’m not going to teach you how it’s supposed to be done. I can teach you how it is being done.” In some cases, I say this is how it’s supposed to be done, but then there is real life, so you should know both stories. There’s a theoretical way of doing it and there’s a practical way.

🔹I.: Thank you!

➡️For students who want to learn directly from practitioners like Elena—educators who bring real businesses, real fundraising rounds, and real entrepreneurial setbacks into the classroom—UIBS’s Master in Responsible Innovation and Strategic Entrepreneurship (RISE) offers exactly that environment. The program is built around the same philosophy Elena champions: applied learning over theory, systems thinking over siloed knowledge, and entrepreneurship grounded in real-world resourcefulness rather than textbook case studies. For aspiring founders and innovators looking to build ventures with both strategic rigor and social responsibility, RISE provides the hands-on, mentorship-driven foundation to turn ambition into action.