Founder of Seguriber and Net4Things and Former President of the Círculo de empresarios
25 November 2025, at Hotel Orfila, Madrid
Mónica de Oriol is an entrepreneur, thinker, and a steadfast voice for freedom, merit, and responsibility in both business and public life.
She launched her entrepreneurial journey in the 1980s with just 18 employees, founding what would become Seguriber. Over three decades, she transformed the company into one of Spain’s leading security and services groups, employing more than 6,000 people and generating revenues above €150 million. In 2012, she spearheaded a merger with Umano and later negotiated an innovative company-wide labor agreement covering the entire workforce. In 2018, she sold Seguriber, achieving one of the few high-profile business exits led by a woman in Spain.
Rather than slowing down, Mónica turned her focus to the future of mobility and technology. She founded Net4Things, a Madrid-based company that developed the Cross-Mobility Platform (XMP), a SaaS solution enabling connected vehicle services across multiple sectors. Net4Things partnered with Telefónica (Movistar Car) and Caser (Drivus), launched IoT platforms in Europe and Latin America with UST Global, and forged international alliances, including in China. In 2024, the company was acquired by EYSA, a transaction that confirmed her foresight in anticipating how connected data would reshape the way we move, pay, and live in cities.
Her leadership is both visionary and pragmatic. “Technology, innovation, and risk need space,” she insists. For Mónica, that space is created through flexibility, fewer distortions, better laws, and institutions agile enough to match the pace of the real economy. She argues that the State should focus on a few essential missions such as education, healthcare, security, and justice, while leaving private initiative to generate innovation and drive progress.
Mónica’s influence goes well beyond her business achievements. She made history as the first woman to chair the Círculo de Empresarios, one of Spain’s most influential think tanks, where she championed meritocracy, excellence, and innovation. She has served on the boards of Indra, OHL, and NTT DATA EMEAL, and continues to serve as president of the Fundación Benéfica Aguirre and trustee of the Fundación Rafael del Pino, alongside her involvement in several NGOs.
Convinced that talent is the ultimate driver of success, she surrounds herself with people “who know more than I do” and gives them the freedom to grow. She draws a clear line between “toxic leadership” and the necessary and humane “surgery” that markets sometimes demand, urging leaders to make difficult decisions with clarity and care. She also challenges us to rethink how we cultivate talent: breaking endogamy, lowering barriers, and rewarding excellence rather than protecting inertia.
Mónica de Oriol is not only a leader of companies but also a challenger of assumptions. From regulation to glass ceilings to the short-term logic of politics, she offers a demanding yet hopeful vision: a society where opportunity is universal, ambition is encouraged, and responsibility is shared.