Forbes awards María Luisa Martínez Gistau as the best Dircom in Spain
María Luisa Martínez Gistau, Director of Communication and Institutional Relations at CaixaBank, has received the Forbes Best Dircom 2021 Award, an award that recognises the work of those professionals who have excelled in the field of corporate communication in the last year.
Martinez Gistau, accompanied by the Chairman of CaixaBank, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, and the CEO of the bank, Gonzalo Gortázar, received the award from Andrés Rodríguez, editor and director of Forbes Spain. The award ceremony, held at the Hotel Rosewood Villa Magna in Madrid, was also attended by communication executives from large Spanish companies and agencies.
“I am thrilled and very grateful for this recognition, which I receive on behalf of CaixaBank and, above all, as part of the team of professionals in the Communication and Institutional Relations department who have been involved in the integration of CaixaBank and Bankia since September 2020”, said Martínez Gistau, who thanked the bank’s chairman and CEO for “his unconditional support for the communication function“.
The Director of Communication and Institutional Relations at CaixaBank explained that the award also represents “recognition of CaixaBank’s communication model, which is guided on a day-to-day basis by criteria such as rigour, commitment, work capacity and spirit of service”. Looking to the future, Martínez Gistau stressed that “one of the criteria that governs our work is the desire to constantly change, to anticipate and adapt to change. Change is not only important and necessary. It is the key that allows leading organisations to maintain their position and continue to grow in a sustainable way”.
In this sense, he added that “in our case, this desire to change towards a 21st century communication model aims to gain relevance and engagement with stakeholders in a competitive digital environment, based on our values: a vocation for service, transparency and the promotion of digitalisation”.
More than two decades of experience in the institution
María Luisa Martínez Gistau has spent her entire professional career in the field of corporate communication management. She holds a degree in Contemporary History from the University of Barcelona and in Information Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with a Senior Management Programme (PADE) from the IESE Business School. After almost four years at the LLYC agency, where she managed the Barcelona office, she began her professional career at “la Caixa” in 2001 to manage media relations. In 2008, she was appointed director of the Communication area, with responsibility for corporate communication tasks and institutional management with the media, and in 2014 she became Corporate Director of Communication, Institutional Relations, Brand and CSR at CaixaBank.
In 2016 she was appointed Executive Director with responsibility for the same areas and since then she has been a member of the CaixaBank Management Committee. In April 2021 she was appointed director of Communication and Institutional Relations at CaixaBank. She is currently president of Dircom Catalonia and member of the board of directors of Dircom national; vice-president of Corporate Excellence and member of Page (Arthur W. Page Society), the leading global association of senior professionals in the communication sector. Between 2018 and 2022, she was also president of Autocontrol, a benchmark body in the self-regulation of the advertising industry in Spain.
