From reinventing the robotics industry in rural Spain to inspiring the next generation of women in tech

Verónica Pascual is proof that you don’t need to live in Silicon Valley to build a wildly successful business. She did it in Burgos, Spain—a city few people have heard of. Asti first emerged back in 1982, and when Verónica joined her family’s company in 2004, it was a small conveyor-belt maker. Four years later, she purchased it and took the company in a bold new direction.

She put her MBA and aerospace engineering degrees to good use, pivoting Asti into a leader in mobile industrial robotics. It designed, manufactured, implemented, and maintained autonomous moving vehicle systems. These autonomous platforms navigate around tight spaces in industrial facilities for companies like Tesla and Apple, moving items from place to place and enabling new, more efficient tasks.

In 2021, Asti Mobile Robotics Group was acquired by ABB (an industrial robotics leader) for $190 million.

Verónica’s Multiplier Effect

Verónica has helped train hundreds of women in engineering, and the multiplier effect of her efforts as an Endeavor mentor and vice president of Endeavor Spain continue to grow.

She joined our Endeavor entrepreneur community in 2016, and later became an Endeavor Outlier due to her outstanding contributions. She embraced and embodied our values at Endeavor so well that she even earned our Linda Award in 2019.

Verónica has mentored at least 30 founders and has made huge efforts to help get more women into STEM careers. She launched the Asti Talent and Technology Foundation and Asti Academy to help women get into these fields—especially engineering where only 10 percent of workers are female. Asti has trained more than 100 students, and hired many of them.

Verónica’s dedication to community building through mentorship and education is fostering a new generation of female engineers and entrepreneurs whose accomplishments we cannot yet fathom.

SPAIN