Mireia Galofré Piedrafita, Mango’s head of total rewards, organization, and people analytics, is weaving data, AI, and human insight into a people strategy designed for scale at the Barcelona-based fashion retailer.
Julie Colwell
Principal Strategist
Workday
Mireia Galofré Piedrafita didn't plan to shape the fabric of a leading fashion company’s global workforce.
The lawyer turned banker turned HR leader now oversees total rewards, organization, and people analytics at Mango, where her decisions touch employees across more than 120 markets. It's a role that demands equal parts precision and creativity, much like the brand itself.
"I'm very proud to say I work at Mango," says Galofré, who wore the label long before joining five years ago. "I've grown up with this brand."
That personal connection runs deeper than most realize. Her mother was a tailor, giving Galofré an early appreciation for the craft behind every stitch. Today, she applies that same attention to detail to building people systems at global scale.
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Galofré's path to fashion HR began in the high-stakes world of financial markets. After discovering that family law wasn't her calling, a back office role at Banking Sabadell revealed an unexpected talent. She loved the pace, the numbers, the adrenaline of markets in motion.
"Change can be scary. But you have to trust your skills, ask for feedback, and be confident about what you're good at."
She stayed a decade, eventually leading a team of more than 20. But fluency in the finance domain turned out to be transferable to another.
"Change can be scary," she reflects. "But you have to trust your skills, ask for feedback, and be confident about what you're good at."
An MBA and an internal pivot into HR set the stage. When Mango came calling, Galofré saw something rare. The chance to help scale and strengthen the people function as the business expanded globally.
Mango operates at the intersection of accessible fashion with a focus on quality and design, with physical stores and digital channels expanding rapidly across six continents. That growth created an urgent need to modernize people operations without losing what makes Mango, Mango.
"It's very rare in a career to get to define the strategy and help roll out enabling capabilities globally."
Galofré's mandate was to build and scale a global total rewards and people analytics strategy. One that could enable workforce planning, give leaders clearer talent insights, and support the company's ambitious expansion.
"It's very rare in a career to get to define the strategy and help roll out enabling capabilities globally," she says.
The challenge wasn't just technical. Change management, Galofré learned, requires a different kind of leadership.
"At the beginning, we had to slow down to speed up," she explains. "We didn't want to be 'the new ones' telling others how to do their jobs. We had to be assertive, but also patient."
The result is a people function increasingly grounded in data and consistency, while preserving the human intuition that fashion (and HR) demands.
"HR is one of the functions most impacted by AI, and one of the most critical to get right,"
Ask Galofré about AI's impact on HR, and she doesn't hedge. It's transformative, and the stakes are high.
"HR is one of the functions most impacted by AI, and one of the most critical to get right," she says.
At Mango, that means using data not just to track headcount, but to better forecast the skills the business will need three to five years out. It means shifting toward skills-based thinking, more fluid project work, and cross-functional collaboration, all supported by modern HR technology.
"We need to ask what skills we'll need in three or five years, and start building them now," Galofré says.
But technology, she insists, is only half the equation. "We have to embrace AI, but HR must continue to deliver impact from the human perspective. We approach AI with strong governance and privacy safeguards, ensuring technology supports people-centric decisions.”
It's a philosophy that mirrors Mango's own approach to fashion. Honor tradition, embrace innovation, but never lose sight of the person wearing the garment.
"We have to embrace AI, but HR must continue to deliver impact from the human perspective."
What drives Galofré isn't the systems or the spreadsheets. It's watching her team grow.
"Doing a good job, developing my team, and seeing them succeed gives me energy," she says.
Her advice for thriving in today's workplace is characteristically direct. Work hard, collaborate constantly, keep learning, stay resilient. And above all, enjoy it.
"You have to like what you do and have fun."
For someone building the HR infrastructure of a global fashion brand worn in 120 markets, that's not just career advice. It's a design principle.
Report
In the past decade HR has undergone a major evoluton from a supportive role to a strategic one. However, as this report finds, HR teams are more conservative on AI than finance and IT. That makes the potential competitive advantage even greater—learn more below.