Prof. Belén Villalonga
Senior Advisor and Associate Partner
Cambridge Family Enterprise Group
Professor Belén Villalonga is a Senior Advisor and Associate Partner at Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise, a highly specialized global advisory firm serving family enterprises. Cambridge Advisors and Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise, an education and research institute, are divisions of Cambridge Family Enterprise Group (CFEG), a global organization founded in 1989. It is devoted to helping families and ownership groups navigate the new economy and achieve multigenerational success for their families, enterprises, and financial wealth.
Professor Villalonga is the William R. Berkley Professor of Management and Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Prior to this, she was a faculty member at Harvard Business School between 2001 and 2012.
Professor Villalonga’s teaching, research, and advisory work focus on family enterprise governance, strategy, and finance. She has developed and taught family business courses and programs for graduate and undergraduate students as well as for executives and business families. Her award-winning research has been published in leading academic journals, has been cited over 20,000 times in scholarly articles, and has been featured in leading international media outlets. Professor Villalonga served as program director for the Family Business Network 2017 annual summit and for the Business Families Foundation 25th anniversary conference in 2015.
Professor Villalonga serves as an independent board director at several family-controlled companies that are global leaders in their respective industries: Técnicas Reunidas (engineering, BME: TRE); Ferroglobe PLC (metallurgy, NASDAQ: GSM); and Mapfre USA (insurance). She has previously served as independent director for Acciona (renewable energy and infrastructure; BME: ANA); Grifols (bioscience and diagnostics, BME: GRF and NASDAQ: GRFS); Talgo (high-speed trains; BME: TLGO); and Banco Santander International (Santander’s private banking subsidiary in the U.S.). She has also been a member or chairperson of various committees at these boards, including audit, risk, compensation and talent management, nominations and governance, and strategy.
Professor Villalonga holds a PhD in Management and an MA in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and a PhD in Business Economics from the Complutense University of Madrid. She is fluent in Spanish, English, and French, and conversant in Portuguese and Italian.
