Educa, in collaboration with Afundación, has been promoting this initiative since 2017 with the aim of paying tribute to all professionals in the field of education who carry out their work in the different stages of formal academic training and also in non-formal education.

Manuel Cuadrado holds a PhD in Economics and Business Administration and was awarded the 2010 Teaching Excellence Award by the University of Valencia and the Regional Ministry of Education. He teaches in different degrees and centers. A teaching that develops through educational innovation projects with social, inclusive and supportive purpose. The last ones have focused mainly on identity and creativity. For instance, last year and from the subject Leasure Marketing of the Tourism degree, she organized together with Professor David Bayona, and within an educational innovation project co-directed with Professor Juan D. Montoro, an academic-professional conference entitled Identity, Creation and Management, to analyze who we are through the arts.

A short film, a collective exhibition and an online café with artists were the activities that the students had to manage. The project was developed in collaboration with students from other subjects of the faculty, as well as from other national and foreign centers. In addition, in the degree of Business Administration and Management, she coordinated a study of audiences at the Olympia Theater as a teaching project for the subject Fundamentals of Market Research in the group with teaching in English. This project is being developed this academic year with the Carmen's Center of Contemporary Culture of Valencia.

The gala ceremony for this edition of the awards brought together 250 people, including award winners, teachers and institutional representatives. In addition to the Minister, the President of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, the Government Delegate in Galicia, José Miñones, the Regional Minister of Education, Román Rodríguez, the Mayor of A Coruña, Inés Rey, and the President of Afundación, Miguel Ángel Escotet, also attended.