Manolo Sanchez was in high school when he decided to be an exchange student in America. He had every intention of returning to his native Spain for university, but when his friends took the SATs he decided to as well. Little did he know, this decision would lead to him getting accepted to Yale.

Now, Sanchez is the CEO and president of banking giant BBVA/Compass. He spoke to students on Feb. 15 as part of the Undergraduate Business Council's VIP Distinguished Speaker Series, and described his journey from picking fruit in Spain, to living in Texas and controlling BBVA operations in the US and Puerto Rico.

A speaker of Spanish, English, French, German, and Arabic, Sanchez earned a masters in international relations from the London School of Economics and a diplome des hautes etudes Europeennes in economics at the College of Europe. His first “real” job out of school was for BBVA.

“At BBVA what really helped me was my languages,” Sanchez said. “I am fluent in the language, but also I am bi-cultural in terms of understanding the market and the people.”

He started at the company in September of 1990, and in 1994 was appointed director and senior vice-president for BBVA Paris. His work has since taken him to New York City, Mexico City and back to Spain before he transferred to Houston.

Sanchez’s talk described how banking can benefit from a combination of innovation, internationality, and ethics. While learning a new language is a plus, Sanchez said, employees should also be versatile, and should have a variety of interests.

“I think that, in this day and age, we have the ability to experience many things. Knowledge is no longer captured in a university’s library, where you have to get books to really tap that knowledge,” he said. “Knowledge is so widely available, and I think that when you are developing a technical knowledge base in your field it can be complimented by a lot of different things.”

After all, in the global economy, it's important to have a broad perspective. For instance BBVA/Compass is working to continue its global strategy and balance the crisis in Europe.

“Spain represents about 30 percent of the bottom line, so what happens in Spain affects our profitability,” Sanchez said. “What is happening is that we are making up the difference elsewhere in the world with fast growing markets like Mexico, like most of Latin America, like the U.S. Those are the benefits of a universal education in your finance career.”

Sanchez said that society has lost its trust in banks, but that BBVA has worked to be an honest, 21st-century company. A strong corporate culture, he said, is the result of their general approach.

“What I can tell you about our company is that it is like a family,” Sanchez said. “The corporate culture comes from a set of principles that we have really sort of massaged over time. At this point, our culture is a sort of multinational type of culture.”