The Board of Trustees
The principal governing body of the Foundation is responsible for representing, governing and administering the Foundation. One of its main functions is to represent the Foundation in events and contracts, and to draw up its program of events. It is comprised of members who are recognized for their achievements in different areas of study and research in bioethics:
President
Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona
Her professional career has included a period as a member of the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia from 2002 to 2008, and she was chairperson of the Commission for Television Content from 1993 to 1996, a period during which she was an independent senator for the socialist party of Catalonia and Spain, the PSC-PSOE.
Victòria Camps has published several books on ethics, political philosophy and bioethics, including Virtudes públicas [Public virtues] (Espasa Non-fiction Prize ), Una vida de calidad [A quality life], La voluntad de vivir [The will to live], Creer en la educación [Believing in education]. Her most recents publications are: El gobierno de las emociones (National Essay Prize) and Breve historia de la ética.
Victòria Camps' professional achievements have been recognised by the Josep Mª Lladó Prize for Freedom of Expression, in 1999; the Prize for Achievement in Education, awarded by the Regional Government of Andalucia in 1999; and the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize, received in 2008. She is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Huelva and Salamanca Universities. Form 2018 to 2022 she was Permanent Member of the State Council.
Montse Busquets is a nurse, with a Master in Bioethics and Law, a degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology, and a PhD in Sociology. She spent most of her professional career as a lecturer at the School of Nursing at the University of Barcelona, and retired in 2017. She worked as a care nurse at Ciudad Sanitaria Valle de Hebrón, and taught at the Príncipes de España University School of Nursing at the Catalan Health Institute, and with the UNED (Spain's National Distance Learning University).
She was co-director of postgraduate teaching in Palliative Care from 2006 to 2017. She has a longstanding interest in the professional ethics of nursing and in bioethics, both in work and in education. She has worked with numerous organizations active in the field of health ethics.
She was a member of the Professional Ethics Committee of the College of Nurses of Barcelona, of the Bioethics Committee of Catalonia, and of the Bioethics and Law Association of the Bioethics Observatory of the University of Barcelona.
Former Director of Clinical Research at the Campus for International Excellence, Autonomous University of Madrid
Rafael Dal-Ré holds a PhD in Medicine from the Complutense University, Madrid, and a Master in Public Health from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has worked primarily in the pharmaceutical industry, and for more than 25 years was medical department director for various multinational companies.
From 2010 to 2013 he was first director and then scientific advisor to the Clinical Research Programme of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation in Barcelona. From 2014 to 2016 he was director of clinical research at the BUC programme (Biosciences UAM+CSIC), Centre for International Excellence, Autonomous University of Madrid. From 1998 to 2010 he was a Fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom. He was also a member of the National Pharmacovigilance Commission of Spain's Department of Health from 1993 to 1996.
He is the author of more than 200 articles published in both Spanish and international journals, over 40 of which relate to aspects of bioethics in clinical research, and scientific integrity.
Begoña Román Maestre holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona, and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona.
Between 1996 and 2007 she held the Chair in Ethics at the Ramon Llull University. She is a member of the well-established research group funded by the Government of Catalonia, "Aporia: Contemporary Philosophy, ethics and politics".
Her area of expertise is applied ethics, which she teaches in several masters and postgraduate programs.
She is the Chair of the Catalan Social Services Ethics Committee, and is a member of the Bioethics Committee of Catalonia and of the primary healthcare ethics committee of the Catalan Health Institute, and is a member of the clinical ethics committees at the Hospital Clinic (Barcelona) and at the Hospital San Rafael (Madrid).
Her most important recent publications include:
Román, B: Ética en los servicios sociales [Ethics in the social services], Barcelona, Herder, 2016.
Esteban, F; Román, B: ¿Quo vadis, Universidad? [Quo vadis, University?], Barcelona, UOC, 2016.
She has been with Spain's leading daily newspaper, El País, since 1982, where she has been senior editor of the paper's Catalonia and Opinion sections, and was reader's editor from 2009 to 2012. She currently writes articles and editorial columns. She is also an interviewer on Terrícoles, produced by Barcelona TV channel Betevé, and appears as a political analyst on a number of programmes, including Hora 25 on Cadena Ser, els Matins on TV3, El Matí on Catalunya Radio, and Vespres on Spanish national broadcaster TVE2.
She was a member of the Bioethics Committee of Catalonia for eight years, and is currently on the Public Health Advisory Board, and is a member of the board of Pompeu Fabra University.
She has won a number of awards, including the Government of Catalonia's National Culture Prize for Journalism, the Grifols Prize for Bioethics, and Barcelona City Council's Social Well-being Award. She also received the Josep Trueta Medal for contributions to health, from the Government of Catalonia.
Director of National Centre for Cancer Research (CNIO) and Head of Telomeres and Telomerase Group
Maria Blasco has a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the "Severo Ochoa" Centre for Molecular Biology, and is a specialist in telomeres and telomerase. In 1993 she moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, where she joined the laboratory led by Carol W. Greider. She returned to Spain in 1997 to set up her own research group at the National Biotechnology Centre (CSIC; Madrid). In 2003 she moved to the National Centre for Cancer Research (CNIO, Madrid) as Director of the Molecular oncology Service and and Head of the Telomeres and Telomerase Group. In 2005 she was appointed Assistant Director of Basic Research at CNIO, and in June 2011 she was named Director of the CNIO.
For more than 20 years, Blasco's work has focused on demonstrating the importance of telomeres and telomerase in cancer and in diseases related to ageing. Blasco received the Award for Scientific Merit from the Regional Government of Valencia in In October 2017, and has been awarded three Honorary Doctorates: from Carlos III University, Madrid, from the University of Alicante and, most recently, from the University of Murcia.
Professor of Criminal Law at the University of the Balearic Islands, graduate and Ph.D in law from the Autonomous University of Madrid. She completed part of her doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Foreign and International Criminal Law, and is a member of the Clinical Ethics Committee at Hospital Universitario Son Espases, Palma de Mallorca.
Her research interests encompass bioethical issues and she has written books on euthanasia and assisted suicide, and articles on many issues including abortion, the confidentiality of health data, the use of the concept of human dignity and its legal applications in bioethics.
She has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Fundación Coloquio Jurídico Europeo since its creation, and was also on the Editorial Board of Humanitas (a journal published by Fundación Medicina y Humanidades Médicas) until it ceased publication. She was a member of the Ethics Committee at the Hospital Clínico Universitario, Valencia, for twelve years (until June 2015).
Professor Sitges has a long career in teaching and researching the basic principles of surgery and endocrine surgery. He has successfully completed five six-year research assessments for the Spanish Ministry of Education, and has published more than 400 scientific articles. A graduate in medicine from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, he specialized in general surgery at Bellvitge Hospital, and subsequently worked in Newcastle, Lyon and Minneapolis.
He has been an associate advisory editor at the British Journal of Surgery, is an honorary member of the French Academy of Surgery, and was awarded a 2012 Fellowship of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland for his contribution to analysis of the application of ethics and sustainability to surgery.
Until his retirement in December 2019, he was Professor of Surgery at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Head of the Department of Endocrine Surgery at Hospital del Mar. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, former chair of the Catalan Society of Surgery, who awarded him the Virgili Prize in 2014, and former chair of the European Society of Endocrine Surgeons.
A graduate in medicine in his native Peru, Dr. Montori is a university professor, researcher and doctor specializing in diabetes at the Mayo Clinic, USA, where he is the lead researcher at the Knowledge and Evaluation Research Unit.
Throughout his career he has been interested in the doctor–patient relationship, and believes it to be the most valuable element in ensuring adequate, careful, kind care. This vision is set out in his book, "The Patient Revolution", which is a call to move beyond today's industrial healthcare model. The ideas in this book led him to create the non-profit organization The Patient Revolution in 2016.
From 2012 to 2015 he was a member of the Council for Healthcare Research and Quality of the US Department of Health and Human Services. He has been a member of the editorial board of the British Medical Association since 2021, and of the management board of Decision Aids Standards Collaboration since 2009.
She holds a PhD in philosophy and arts from the University of Barcelona (UB) and completed post-doctoral research at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and Goldsmiths' College, London. She played a major role in the establishment of social anthropology in Catalonia at the Catalan Institute of Anthropology, and has pioneered the introduction of anthropology at UB and URV.
Throughout her extensive academic career her research has focused on gender and social justice. She coordinated the Spanish group of the International Group on Social Transition, directed by Maurice Godelier (EHESS, Paris) and her books include Antropología económica (Economic Anthropology), Vides de dones (Women's Lives) and Trabajo, género y cultura (Work, Gender and Culture) in which she was one of the first authors to address the issue of care in Spain.
She has served as a member of the local council of Tarragona, as a Member of the Parliament of Catalonia, and as a member of the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia.
PhD in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona (UB) and emeritus professor at the University of Girona.
Joan Manuel del Pozo holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona (UB) and is emeritus professor at the University of Girona. He lectures regularly both in Spain and abroad on the issues of education, philosophy, ethics and politics.
He was co-founder and director of the Observatory of Ethics Applied to Social, Psychoeducational and Health Activities, member of the Committee for the Integrity of Research in Catalonia, and of the Board of Trustees of the University of Girona.
He has translated three of Cicero's philosophical treatises – De natura deorum, De re publica and Paradoxa Stoicorum – into Catalan for the Fundación Bernat Metge. He is the author of the direct translation of Thomas More's Utopia from the original Latin. His recent publications include an essay on urban ethics titled Ciutats de valors, ciutats valuoses (Cities with Values, Valuable Cities) and he has co-authored with Ulises Cortés a book of dialogues on artificial intelligence La intel·ligència (artificial) a la butaca ([Artificial] Intelligence in the Chair).
He was elected to the Spanish Congress and to the Catalan Parliament, was Vice-Mayor of Girona and Minister for Education and Universities in the last government of Pasqual Maragall. He has also been a member of the Board of Management of the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation.
She joined Osborne Clarke in 2012 and mainly specializes in corporate governance with respect to listed companies, as well as international M&A transactions. She holds a Law Degree from ESADE Law School in Barcelona where she graduated in 2011.
In 2023 she was appointed as a trustee and Secretary of the Board of Trustees of Fundació Víctor Grifols i Lucas and selected to join the 8th edition of the "Women's Talent Pool Leadership Programme" organized by the European Network for Women in Leadership (WIL Europe).
Silvia has extensive experience of administrative management in the field of bioethics. For over 20 years she was Secretarial Manager at the Borja Institute of Bioethics (Ramon Llull University), where her duties included organizing training activities, workshops and conferences, supervising the publishing program, maintaining the accounts, and monitoring budgets. In June 2015 she joined the team of the Foundation as Secretarial and Administrative Manager. She is also responsible for coordinating training activities for health professionals, and for events logistics.
Maria holds a journalism degree, with a specialization in business communications. She has pursued a career in the pharmaceutical and health sectors, where her previous employers include Sandoz and the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu.
In 2008 she joined the communications department of Grifols, and started working with the Foundation on communication projects, events organization and publications. Since 2013 she has been the Foundation's project coordinator.
Pau has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Girona, and completed a Master’s in Citizenship and Human Rights at the University of Barcelona, where he specialized in Bioethics. He has been a member of the Clinical Ethics Committee of Parque Sanitario de San Juan de Dios and has also been a member of the Documentation and Debate department of the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture (CCCB). He is currently completing a doctorate on ethics and artificial intelligence.
He joined the Foundation as an intern in 2018 to provide project management support. When his internship came to an end in September 2019, he was appointed to the post of Project Assistant, performing a wide range of duties related to events organization and content management for the internet and social media.