Isabel Capeloa Gil, rector of the Portuguese Catholic University, ranks second in the Education and Science category of the 2024 list of Portugal's Most Powerful Women in Business.
Isabel Capeloa Gil, rector of the Portuguese Catholic University since 2016 and president of the International Federation of Catholic Universities since 2018, is on this year's list of the Most Powerful Women in Business. With a total of 66 points, the manager stood out due to her curriculum and achieved second place in the Education and Science category of the 2024 ranking drawn up by Forbes Portugal.
Born in 1965, the professor was the first woman to hold the position of president of the International Federation of Catholic Universities, a position she is expected to hold until 2025. With more than 150 scientific articles and published works, her work is considered a valuable addition to the study of culture in Portugal.
With a total of 66 points, Isabel Capeloa Gil ranks second in the Education and Science category of the list of Portugal's Most Powerful Women in Business.
With a degree in Modern Languages and Literatures from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and a master's degree in German Studies from the same institution, she also holds the position of Full Professor of Culture Studies at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon. During her academic career, she attended Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and the University of Chicago in the United States, and obtained her PhD in German Studies at the Faculty of Humanities of the Portuguese Catholic University of Lisbon, where she was director between 2005 and 2012, and vice-rector between 2012 and 2016. She has also been a guest lecturer and researcher at various universities abroad.
Isabel Capeloa Gil: A packed CV
During her time as a manager, she has created and coordinated a network of collaboration between the university and the cultural sector, including the creation of the Master's Degree in Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Human Sciences. She has also held other management positions in other national and international organizations, such as ICLA (International Comparative Literature Association) and ICA (International Communication Association).
She coordinated the Research Leadership Forum of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC), and is also a member of the European Council of Foreign Relations, the Advisory Board of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the UCP Foundation. She has held honorary doctorates from Boston College since 2019 and the Institut Catholique de Paris since 2021, and in 2022 she was appointed by Pope Francis as a consultant to the Holy See's Dicastery for Education and Culture.
Forbes Portugal magazine has published its ranking of the 55 Most Powerful Women in Business in its August/September issue. Forbes Portugal's evaluation is based on five criteria, scored from zero to 20, thus obtaining a final score for each name analyzed: Fortune, Power of Decision, Power of Influence, Business Size and Entrepreneurship. Once scored, the names were organized by the areas of activity in which they stand out the most, selecting the five women with the highest scores in each category.
