Sánchez de Lerín defines his time as a judoka, in which he participated in regional tournaments, as the moment in which, thanks to the work of his coach, he was able to learn the values of humility, discipline and effort.
His teacher was none other than Rafael Ortega, a pioneer of this discipline in Spain and fifteen times national champion, who defends a “total” style that forces his students “to give 200% in each training session.”
In addition, the discipline imposed in the dojo favored, in his opinion, the perseverance necessary to avoid “the distractions” typical of youth; something he transferred to his high-achieving academic life to become a lawyer, inspired by his father, until his first internships discovered him a new passion: business.
In this way, he decided to expand his knowledge with an MBA program at the Columbia University Business School in New York.
To get there, Ignacio Sánchez de Lerín took advantage of the Ramón Areces Foundation scholarship program, whose help was used to cover university costs, medical insurance coverage and a monthly amount to pay for the costs of living in the metropolis. new yorker
In his words, the experience has been “a turning point” in his professional career since it has opened the doors to the global professional market and has allowed him to currently work for a multinational in Belgium.
In principle, his scholarship only contemplated the completion of a school year, however, the good performance in the classroom allowed him to be part of the dean’s honor group -which only 25% of the students with the best grades have access to- and, with For this, he extended his stay until 2021.
“I am eternally grateful to the Ramón Areces Foundation and, above all, to a person that we all miss, such as Concepción Pinto González. She made life very easy for all the scholarship holders and allowed us to focus on how truly important the master’s degree was”, she told EFE Agency.
To date, this Foundation has held 35 calls for postgraduate studies abroad in Social Sciences (economics and law), with a total of 523 scholarship students at centers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), the London School of Economics (LSE) in London or the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium).
From the institution they hope that the current call, open until February 28, exceeds the 227 applications of the previous year.
“The ultimate goal of the program boils down to a very simple idea: to change the lives of the people who benefit from it. To do this, we offer young graduates an opportunity, which otherwise they would not have, to complete their training in the best centers in the world”, Miguel Jerez, member of the Social Sciences Council of the Ramón Areces Foundation, told EFE. EFE
