Manuel Muñiz
Boards are being asked to make long-horizon capital decisions while the rules-based order they relied on for thirty years is coming apart. Sanctions regimes, technology controls, and great-power rivalry now sit inside ordinary commercial decisions about supply chains, AI investment, and market access. Leadership teams need a serious framework for reading geopolitical change, not headlines.
Manuel Muniz is Provost of IE University and a former Secretary of State in the Spanish Foreign Ministry who advises senior leaders on geopolitics, technology, and the strategic reordering of the global economy.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Manuel Muñiz
- Government office at the level where geopolitical strategy is actually written. As Spain’s Secretary of State for Global Spain, he coordinated the country’s foreign action strategy and its first national strategy on technology and global order.
- A scholarly frame for the technology and geopolitics intersection. His Oxford doctoral work and Brookings fellowship give boards a structured way to think about the US-China technology competition, AI, and the political economy of disruption.
- Institutional vantage point. As Provost of IE University and former Dean of IE’s School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs, he sits at the centre of one of Europe’s most connected platforms on global affairs.
- A specific argument about the social contract. His writing on populism, inequality, and the consequences of technological change gives leaders language for the political risks now landing inside their markets and workforces.
Biography highlights
- Provost of IE University and Dean of IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs (SPEGA)
- Former Secretary of State for Global Spain at the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation
- Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution
- President of APSIA, the global association of professional schools of international affairs, 2023 to 2025
- DPhil, International Relations, University of Oxford; MPA, Harvard Kennedy School
- Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit, Spain (2024); David Rockefeller and Eisenhower Fellow
Biography
Spain’s first National Strategy on Technology and Global Order was coordinated by a vice minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whose doctoral work at Oxford had already mapped the same terrain. Manuel Muñiz held that office from 2020 to 2021, and the strategy reflected a view he had been developing for a decade: technological change, inequality, and geopolitical fragmentation are one connected problem, not three.
He now leads IE University as Provost, having previously built its School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs from a small programme into one of Europe’s most international platforms for public policy and international relations, with around 1,900 students and a faculty connected to government, multilateral institutions, and global firms.
His scholarship and writing sit where most board agendas now sit: the US-China technology competition, the regulation of AI, the fracturing of the rules-based order, and the political consequences of an economy in which growth no longer reliably produces shared prosperity. Essays appear in Project Syndicate, El Pais, The Washington Post, and Le Monde. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings.
In 2023 he was elected President of APSIA, the international association of professional schools of international affairs, the first Spaniard to hold the role. In 2024 he received the Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit, one of Spain’s senior civilian honours.
Key speaking topics
- Geopolitics and the new global order
- Technology, AI and great-power competition
- Strategic foresight for boards and governments
- The political economy of disruption and inequality
- Transatlantic relations and European security
- Economic diplomacy and the future of multilateralism
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees with material exposure to US-China competition, sanctions, or technology controls
- Government, foreign ministry, and multilateral audiences working on technology and global order
- Senior leaders in finance, energy, defence, and technology managing geopolitical risk
- Foundation, university, and policy convenings on democracy, populism, and the social contract
Audience outcomes
- A clearer reading of where great-power competition is heading and what it means for capital allocation
- A framework for connecting technological change, inequality, and political instability inside one strategic picture
- A sharper sense of the policy and regulatory direction on AI, data, and critical technologies
- Vocabulary senior leaders can use with their own boards and governments on geopolitics and technology
Talks
A reading of the current geopolitical landscape and how it is restructuring the rules of international business and security.
Key takeaways:
- How great-power competition between the United States and China is reshaping technology, trade, and security
- What conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific signal about the wider international order
- Implications for NATO, the European Union, and the multilateral system
An argument that populism and political volatility are symptoms of a deeper breakdown in the economic and social contract.
Key takeaways:
- Why traditional growth models are no longer producing shared prosperity
- How technological change is fracturing labour markets and political coalitions
- What a contemporary social contract could look like, and what it asks of business
How technology is becoming the central axis of geopolitical competition, and what that means for boards and governments.
Key takeaways:
- The emerging architecture of technology policy across the US, China, and the European Union
- How AI and digital infrastructure are now matters of national security
- What strategic foresight looks like inside organisations exposed to fast-moving policy change