CEO - Neiker

Leire Barañano holds a PhD in Business Management, Innovation and Knowledge from the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea.

In her 20 years of professional career, D. Leire Barañano has been able to get to know the agri-food value chain as a whole, which has provided her with a valuable cross-cutting vision to detect the challenges it faces. Since 2017 she has been CEO of the NEIKER technology centre, which offers innovative solutions to help the agri-food and forestry sector. Also from NEIKER, she promotes the forestry bioeconomy strategy of the Basque Country, to generate added value opportunities based on the use of biological resources and sustainable production processes. She is vice-chair of the board of the European Forest Institute (EFI) and in 2021 she joined the Basque Council for Science, Technology and Innovation.