Think Women’s 40 Outstanding Global Women 2025 | Elaine Héry, Eres Relocation
Elaine Hery, managing partner at Eres Relocation, never intended to start her own business. In fact, if life had gone to plan, she would probably be a marketing executive or in a senior leadership role at ICI, the British multinational chemical giant where she started her career. But life—and love—had other ideas.
21 March 2025
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“I wasn’t supposed to stay in Spain,” she says, remembering how a temporary assignment in Barcelona in her twenties turned into a permanent relocation. “I was standing in for someone who was ill, and my assignment was meant to be a month, then it became a year, and by then I had met my husband, who is Spanish, and I didn’t want to return to the UK. I loved living in Spain and so I began looking for jobs there instead.”That unexpected twist marked the beginning of a journey that would take Elaine from the structured corporate environment to the unpredictable world of entrepreneurship, ultimately leading her to establish a hugely successful relocation businesses.Together with business partner José Antonio de Ros, Elaine oversees International Marketing, Global Communication and Personal Development and Training for Eres’ teams in Europe, where the company has eight offices in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and The Netherlands.
The corporate training ground
Elaine was a hard worker at school, passing her exams with flair and completing a History degree at Manchester University.“My degree had nothing to do with business,” she says, “but ICI had a fast-track career programme for graduates and I was successful in applying for a place. That training gave me exposure to every department—distribution, purchasing, and finally marketing and sales.”It was there that Elaine discovered her strengths. “At first, I wasn´t really interested in the ‘business side of business,’” she says. “I cared about relationships, communication, and marketing. ICI was where I learned how to set goals and go after them.”It was ICI who sponsored Elaine´s masters degree in International Business & Communication at INSEAD, and helped her to develop her business & commercial marketing skills.ICI also planted the seed of international work. “They realized that while 90 per cent of their employees were British, 75 per cent of their sales were outside the UK,” she says. So they needed to develop a more global mindset.”For many years ICI was the largest manufacturer in Britain, and it was based at Millbank in London. It was a major British business and employer and was a constituent of the FT 30 and later the FTSE 100 indices. It was taken over by AkzoNobel in January 2008 and Elaine’s division of ICI became Astra Zeneca when the remainder of the business was sold to Akzo Chemicals.Continue reading on our sister website, Think Global People
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