“Networking for executives and aspiring executives”
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The Asociación Española de Directivos – AED (Spanish Association of Executives) was born in January 1996 from the merger of two highly prestigious organisations: the Asociación de Directivos de Empresa – ASACE and the Club Financiero de Barcelona. Since then, other associations have joined AED, such as Tribuna de Girona and the European Women’s Management Development International Network – EWMD.
In 2005 the Asociación para el Control y Dirección – ACODI and AED decided to join forces and merged to create a larger organisation whose mission is to strengthen the grouping and representation of executives and business professionals. The new AED currently has 1,800 executive members and 21 corporate members.
In 1997 AED created the Confederación Española de Directivos y Ejecutivos – CEDE (Spanish Confederation of Managers and Executives), whose mission is to group and represent the different executive associations across Spain as a whole. It brings together 43 associations and more than 94,000 executives, making it the main representative body of Spain’s executive class. I highly recommend subscribing to its newsletter to keep up with the activities of its more than 40 members. Click here.
Of all the associations I have come across in my career, AED is without doubt one of the most important and the one that brings together the highest-level executives. It holds a good number of events, mainly in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, where it has governing bodies.
It organises around 60 events a year, which makes it one of the most active, and it has further advantages too. Read more here.
It organises events with top-level speakers and the price of attending is never prohibitive. Another thing I like is that it has a parallel branch for young executives, so if you are under 40 or have only just turned 40, you will have events where you can network with professionals of your own generation.
People go to AED to do professional networking, and that is much appreciated, because both the team organising the events and the attendees arrive (we arrive) prepared with business cards, and the networking flows naturally, cordially and without stress.
Events, conferences, awards, congresses… whatever you like.
They also have an active group on LinkedIn 
Happy high-level networking!!
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