Sustainability Performance

Since 1995 Maria has worked with the most representative Spanish companies on integrating and certifying sustainability systems and practices. She has been particularly involved in establishing environmental management systems and has been training auditors for EMS certification from the very beginning in Spain.

This experience has provided her with a deep understanding of the real environmental practices carried out by companies and the main difficulties they face in environmental performance and performance management. As an auditor leader she has participated in a great number of environmental management systems audits of across a great diversity of companies obtaining first hand knowledge of the culture of the organizations and the way that culture determines business and sustainability performance.

Over ten years she has trained more than 2500 people of all sectors to incorporate environmental management systems, environmental audits, environmental reports and environmental management indicators. Maria has also been involved in the verification of hundreds of environmental reports according to European Scheme EMAS from companies of very different activities to help them to deliver trustworthy information.

She has guided the annual auditor forums in coordinating approaches to the most frequent problems in establishing environmental management within companies and in collating the evidence of performance improvement.

Professional Background

Maria has been Environmental Technical Coordinator of AENOR for six years in environmental management systems certification in Spain. She coordinated more than 100 environmental auditors from a wide range of different sectors and resolved conflicts in the application and certification of environmental management systems of 3000 companies.

Internationally, she has been participating for years in international meetings as a Technical expert for the Spanish Delegation in the International Committee ISO 207 in which was developed and reviewed the ISO 14000 standards.

As a representative of the Spanish Environmental Management Committee she has helped to develop the Spanish standards for sectors like hospitals, harbours, hotels, ecodesign management, etc.

She continues to contribute through courses, lectures, workshops, meetings, and consulting to shift the cultural background from a mindset of control and continual improvement to the evolution of a higher level of awareness for sustainability challenges and a greater maturity environmental and social management practices.

Maria speaks Spanish and English.