Àngels Fitó proposed as new president of the UOC

In a meeting on Thursday 2 February, the Board of Trustees of the Fundació per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (FUOC) unanimously agreed to propose the appointment of Dr Àngels Fitó as the new president of the UOC, following a recruitment process that involved a wide selection of candidates.

She will now go before the FUOC's Advisory Board and a Delegate Committee made up of 15 representatives from the University Council, the UOC community's highest participatory body. If their reports endorse the decision, the Board of Trustees will then make the appointment and request the approval of the Government of Catalonia. As soon as the appointment is made official, with its publication in the Official Journal of the Government of Catalonia, a transition period will begin. This will end when the new president takes over fully at the inauguration ceremony. Àngels Fitó is thus set to become the fourth president of the UOC, following on from Gabriel Ferraté (1995-2005), Imma Tubella (2005-2012) and Josep A. Planell (2013-2023).

This marks the end of a recruitment process that began in December 2021 when the Board of Trustees named a search committee made up of four board members. This search committee set out the requirements the candidates needed to fulfil and appointed a selection committee of three world-renowned experts to shortlist the final candidates from those who applied. The final step saw the Board of Trustees assess the final three candidates proposed by the search committee and propose Àngels Fitó to take on the role to lead the UOC for the next seven years, as per the procedures set out in the Statutes.

The Board of Trustees thanked Dr Josep A. Planell and the members of his executive team for their work and dedication over these last ten years. Over this period, the UOC has experienced a period of expansion and sustained growth which has seen the number of students and annual budget practically double. The university now has over 100,000 graduates and was the first in Catalonia to receive official accreditation from the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (AQU) for all of its programmes. The Board of Trustees also highlighted the UOC's commitment to and leadership of the digital transformation of higher education in response to the profound changes that have affected education and training, research and knowledge, and work and daily life over recent years. 

Àngels Fitó, an expert in tax, finances and management control

Fitó has a PhD in Business and Economics from the University of Barcelona, is a senior professor at the UOC, and has been Vice President for Competitiveness and Employability since 2019.

Between October 2010 and February 2019, she was dean of the UOC's Faculty of Economics and Business. Throughout her academic career, she has specialized in tax and financial management and management control, and has taught courses on these subjects at a number of universities (University of Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Pompeu Fabra University, and the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia). She combined her teaching work with a professional career in accounting and tax consulting for private companies and public institutions.

She has also been deputy chair of the Catalan Professional Association of Economists since November 2021, and a member of the Government of Catalonia's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

Her research interests focus on financial reporting harmonization processes, management control systems and the transformative power of higher education for employability given the complexity of labour market dynamics. She leads a number of different local and international initiatives in this field to reconfigure higher education and provide a response to the challenges for lifelong learning arising in the current context of transition.

She is the mother of three children and author of three novels.