Mr. José Maria Gomez Fuster

José María Gómez Fuster has been Managing Director of the Port Authority of Cartagena since June 2023. A civil engineer with a PhD, he brings 22 years of professional experience, 16 of them in the port sector and five leading port authorities. 

His career began in civil construction, with six years as a site manager at Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas and Española de Montajes Metálicos. In 2010 he joined the Port Authority of Cartagena as Head of Planning, where he drove the Master Plan for the new Cartagena basin, the Special Plan for the Escombreras basin, and the Digitalization Master Plan. From 2015 to 2016 he led Planning and Strategy, and from 2016 to 2021 Operations, with responsibility for port services and traffic coordination. In 2021 he took over as Director of the Port Authority of Castellón, returning to Cartagena as Managing Director in June 2023. 

At Cartagena he leads strategy, operations, infrastructure, business development, sustainability, innovation and people management, accountable to the Board of Directors for the Business Plan and the Investment Plan. His current agenda centers on the 2026–2030 Strategic Plan, the energy transition — LNG bunkering, onshore power supply, and residual cold recovery from the regasification plant — the redevelopment of strategic land in Escombreras, and the redesign of the organization's pay and performance model. 

His training combines a technical foundation from Universidad de Granada, a year of graduate coursework at the University of California, Davis, sector specialization at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid with an MSc in Port Management, the Advanced Management Program at IE Business School, and a PhD in Civil Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena. His thesis, on statistical and optimization tools for the efficient management of port terminals applied to the Port of Cartagena, was awarded Cum Laude and recognized by the Smart Ports Chair as best doctoral thesis. UPCT is his longest institutional relationship and the only one where he has stood on both sides of the classroom, having lectured there from 2012 to 2018 in port engineering, port management and International MBA programs. 

He has published on probabilistic risk modeling for port investment, multi-agent systems for the temporal coordination of vessel calls, and the regional economic impact of ports, in journals including Applied Sciences, Case Studies on Transport Policy and Maritime Economics & Logistics. Institutionally, he is Vice-Dean of the Murcia branch of the Spanish Association of Civil Engineers, a board member of the Spanish Technical Association of Ports and Coasts, and takes part in ESPO's port governance and management work, having previously served on its economic analysis and statistics committee and as Spanish representative on PIANC's environmental commission.