Javier CHÉRCOLES BLÁZQUEZ

Javier Chércoles Blázquez is a leading international expert in crisis and disaster management, with a distinguished career dedicated to protecting vulnerable workers and improving corporate accountability in global value chains. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from ESADE University in Barcelona (Spain, 2013), where his research focused on the intersection of corporate responsibility, risk, and social protection systems.

From 1995 to 2001, Dr. Chércoles served at PricewaterhouseCoopers as Director of Strategy and Corporate Reputation Services, advising multinational companies on sustainability, governance, and complex risk mitigation. He then joined Inditex, where he served as Global CSR Director between 2001 and 2010. During this period, he designed the pioneering Spectrum Compensation Scheme (Savar, Bangladesh, 2005), an early model to compensate victims of industrial incidents, supporting more than 300 beneficiaries.

Since 2013, he has been senior advisor for the ABF Group (London, Madrid and Dhaka), where he led the development of the Savar Project Compensation Scheme in response to the Rana Plaza man-made disaster (2013–2016). This landmark initiative ensured compensation and long-term rehabilitation for over 1,000 affected individuals, becoming a global reference for corporate accountability after industrial catastrophes.

In parallel, Dr. Chércoles has served as Director of The Simon Project at the Institute of Disaster Management Studies, University of Dhaka (2016–2025). Under his leadership, ground-breaking actuarial and forensic technologies have been deployed to capture health and risk data of more than 150,000 workers, laying the foundation for sustainable social protection and workplace safety systems in Bangladesh and beyond.