Radisson Hotel Group's Iñigo Capell was entrusted with jobs he wasn’t ready for, more than once. Now he leads by doing the same for his team.
Emma Coppin
Multimedia Content Lead, Thought Leadership and Customer Stories
Workday
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Several times in his career, someone entrusted Iñigo Capell with a role he wasn’t ready for and bet on him to grow into it.
“These guys took the risk on me, and I feel I have the obligation toward my colleagues to do something similar,” says Radisson Hotel Group’s global chief people and resources officer.
Today, his remit spans people and culture, technology, technical and design, strategic sourcing, safety and security, and responsible business. While his background is in HR, the rest of his portfolio arrived one responsibility at a time. "Delegating implies trust," he says. "It implies taking risks, a lot of listening, and giving the right vision."
“These guys took the risk on me, and I feel I have the obligation toward my colleagues to do something similar.”
Growing up in Madrid as one of three siblings born a year apart, Iñigo was a quiet, introverted child—a contrast that surprises anyone meeting him as an adult. "When I tell friends or people I meet that I was an introvert, some people don't believe it," he laughs.
At 14, his world shifted when his parents moved him from a tight-knit school where everyone knew each other to a much larger one. But the friendships that truly shaped him took root closer to home, playing on the street with neighborhood children.
"Friends are the family you choose," he says. "The friends I made as a teenager are still my best friends today." He credits that circle with helping him step out of his shell and find his confidence.
His other early influence was his father, now in his mid-90s, who had been a finance executive at a large electric company and was an extremely curious man, often found reading a book. When it came time for Iñigo to choose a course of study, his father didn't push.
"He told me, study whatever you want to study," Iñigo says. With no clue what he wanted, Iñigo followed in his father’s footsteps, studying law and business.
When an internship at Hewlett-Packard proved law wasn't for him, Juan Mora asked whether he would consider moving into HR. When Iñigo told his father, the reaction was swift. "HR?" his father said. "You need to be a great lawyer." Iñigo convinced him it was a good opportunity, and made the move. "I'm sure this was the right decision," he says.
A few years later, he was presented with another opportunity, which meant having a second hard conversation with his father. In 1999, after two and a half years at one of Spain's biggest banks, Iñigo received an offer from an internet incubator. He went home and told his father, "I'm quitting, and I'm moving to an internet company."
His father's answer: "Internet? What's that?" In those days, Iñigo explains, a job at a bank was a job for life. Still, his father never stood in his way. "He was always extremely respectful," Iñigo says. "He tried to influence me based on the world he knew."
At the incubator, Iñigo was hired at 25 as HR director, a job he had never done, alongside seasoned colleagues from investment banks and McKinsey. "Why would anyone hire a 25-year-old guy as HR director of this project?" he asks. "But they made the decision. I took the role, and I was not ready, but that year I grew so much,” he reflects.
In 2002, Juan brought Iñigo into hospitality at NH Hotel Group, and years later proposed him as his successor. Federico González, who became NH's CEO and now leads Radisson, then asked Iñigo to take on technology on top of HR, procurement, and technical design. "I told him technology is a very big fish," Iñigo recalls. "I was not ready. But he trusted me."
That trust shaped how he views technology and AI today; not as a substitute for human connection, but as a way to handle transactional admin so teams have more time to look people in the eye and build genuine relationships.
What carried him through each jump was preparation, along with a strong team and honesty with bosses who were patient with his growth. One night at NH stays with him. After leading a long, complex negotiation with unions, he was waiting on a vote by committees from hotels across the company when his boss called. "He told me, the entire board is aware of the incredible work you have done," Iñigo remembers. "No matter how this ends, we are all convinced that you did a great job." The committees agreed to the deal.
He has carried that into how he leads. He hires people he considers much better than himself and sees protecting them as part of his job. "You would never hear a negative word from me about my team," he says. When young people ask him for career advice, he always gives the same tip: "Choose your boss."
“You would never hear a negative word from me about my team”
In 2017, at 42, Iñigo made the international move he and his wife had been talking about: a role with Radisson Hotel Group in Brussels, a city the family knew nothing about. They arrived knowing no one, learning the Belgian city together from scratch. "We all made friends at the same time," he says. His wife still calls those years the best of their lives.
These days he organizes his life around what he calls the perfect triangle, family, work, and self. Early in his career, before he had a family, work took up most of it. Now family comes first, and in recent years he has intentionally carved out space for the third side: "learning how to rest, learning how to exercise, and learning how to enjoy life."
Preserving that balance requires non-negotiable routines. Despite weekly travel that has generated 1,300 archived boarding passes, he trains remotely every Wednesday with a longtime personal trainer he has never met in person. Building that discipline did not come naturally—he likens it to overcoming introversion—but strict routines provide the backbone he relies on: "I could not live without this."
Sometimes he imagines his kids, years from now, meeting someone at work who recognizes their last name. He hopes they hear that their father was a good person. "I hope they say, your father helped me take a risk on my career," he says, "and it proved to be successful."
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