Welcoming Elena Guillen Alvarez, our new Sales Manager for Spain.
Farmable continues to work with more farmers around the world. Elena Guillen Alvarez fills the newly created Sales Manager role for Spain. We are pleased to have Elena on the team. We took the time to get to know her more and share what makes Elena excited to work with Spanish farmers.
Spanish-Born Globe Trotter
Elena is originally from Spain; born in Barcelona, raised in Madrid, and graduate of Rey Juan Carlos University. She learned teamwork from an early age, enjoying playing basketball and maintaining relationships with the rest of the team into adulthood. These relationships continued, across borders when she moved to China, continuing studies in management. Elena then moved to Norway with her partner in 2016.
As a global citizen, Elena speaks native Spanish, professionally proficient in English, intermediate in Chinese, and fluent in Norwegian. Being from Spain and having vast international experience is beneficial to any business and their communication needs, and she is an excellent addition to the broadening culture in the team.
Elena reports to Kaye Hope, the CCO. When asked about the diversity of the team, Kaye said “It’s essential. We are becoming a global company, and our team should reflect our customers.” Many emerging global businesses are operating locally in each market, adjusting for the local customer’s unique needs. Just last year Farmable also hired specifically for the Australian market.
Elena noted that it was great to work with so many people from different backgrounds, contributing different mindsets and attitudes towards constructive discussions. The diversity in the team echoes the modern drive for the benefits of diversity in innovation.
Driven Towards Technology
Elena’s background is mainly in quality, marketing, and sales. More recently, she has been driven towards a genuine interest in digitisation and technology, taking part in the changes in how data collection and management will create benefits for businesses. Elena’s thesis for her Masters in Management was about Spanish wine entering the Chinese market. Investigating the Spanish wine supply chain furthered her understanding of international markets and the value chains important to local economies.
Elena is managing the Spanish market for Farmable and supports the global ambitions of the business. She was thrilled to find the opportunity to work for a Norwegian company entering the Spanish market. Talking about enabling growers with data management, Elena responded “The opportunity of working for a company with the vision of empowering growers to feed the world by reinventing how they gather and use their data. Who would not want to be part of that transformation?”
It is a humbling journey to be a part of for many. Farmable works with growers on different sides of the world to achieve a common goal transcending cultural, linguistic, and geographical differences. “It’s incredible,” adds Lars Blikom, CEO, “Our growers talk different languages and have unique challenges with their land and climate. Most of them identify data management as one of the biggest challenges for their future.”
Looking to the Future
Elena understands the struggle that the world faces in the future, and notes that to meet the growing global population’s demand by 2050, growers need to increase production by 70%. With a limited farmland supply, Elena believes that this increase will need to be reconciled with gains in efficiency by bridging the digital gap.
Empathy is a requirement when it comes to entering any market. Elena knows that adapting to new technologies is a difficult change for many. Growers taking on Farmable will help with the increasing amount of data that is available. Better data management won’t just make life better for growers, but it may help feed the world moving into the future.
We are excited to have Elena as a member of the team, and to work together with Spanish farmers providing them with the farm management tools they need to step into the future of farming.