María Martínez Carrón

Martínez Carrón posing in front of the Boston skyline in 2012.

We often say that a semester-long study abroad experience can have a lasting impact on one’s life. This has indeed proven true for María Martínez Carrón. While an undergraduate at Universidad CEU San Pablo (CEU) in Madrid, Spain, she spent a semester studying at Boston University (BU), where she earned an International Business Certificate through a unique partnership program between the two schools.

Over the past decade, more than 200 students have completed the CEU-Boston University course of study, earning a bachelor’s degree from CEU and an International Business Certificate from BU. Alumni from the program have been recruited by prestigious companies such as Deloitte, El Corte Inglés, NH Hoteles, PwC, Volkswagen, Banco Santander and Ernst and Young, among others.

Featured speakers at the CEU-BU 10th Anniversary ceremony in 2016 (Martínez Carrón is seated next to BU MET’s Dean Zlateva on the far left).

To mark the ten-year anniversary of the program’s inception, CEU hosted a special celebration on the Moncloa Campus in central Madrid in March 2016. Attendees included students, alumni, CEU professors, Dean Tanya Zlateva of BU’s Metropolitan College, BU faculty and administrators, a representative of the U.S. Embassy in Spain and a broad range of friends of the program.

Martínez Carrón describes Boston as “an active and multicultural city” full of students who display a unique sense of pride. “I wanted to have a similar feeling working at a place where I could feel proud to belong and of our work,” she says. “I realized I wanted to work at a place with a strong international perspective doing dynamic work.”

While studying at BU, Martínez Carrón visited Maine, among other New England destinations.

According to Martínez Carrón, her semester at BU provided an enriching multicultural education. “My favorite class was ‘Innovation, Global Competitiveness and National Economic Development’ with Professor Barry Unger,” she remembers. “I enjoyed the debates and presentations. We had a very multicultural class… Working side-by-side on projects was very constructive. I understood the power of empathy on different levels.”

After earning a Bachelor’s degree with honors in both Business Administration and Law at CEU, Martínez Carrón began working as an attorney for Gomez-Acebo & Pombo (GA&P), first in London and then in Madrid. In addition to practicing corporate and commercial law for clients with an international presence, she also handles merger and acquisition transactions and deals with cases involving start-ups, food law and the regulation of venture capital and private equity entities. Martínez Carrón also does pro bono work through the Fernando Pombo Foundation to help public interest initiatives succeed.