Miriam Ceballos is CEO and Founder of Supernova and has more than twelve years of experience in luxury hospitality and international agencies. This interview explores her vision of contemporary luxury, the creation of unique and emotionally engaging experiences, and the importance of curation, discernment and authenticity in designing events for international brands.

What does luxury mean to you?

Twelve years ago, I would have said that luxury was the detail. The perfection of the service. The unique piece.

Today, I define it differently.

Luxury is access to what can’t be bought with a budget. The sommelier who only works with those he knows personally, or the master craftsman who still makes tiles by hand in a workshop accessible only by recommendation. The olive grower who welcomes a group of executives to his grove because someone cultivated that relationship over years.

Everything else—the five-star hotel, the Michelin-starred chef, the chauffeured car—is no longer luxury. It’s a market standard. Any brand can buy it if they have the budget.

True luxury, in 2026, is curation. The question isn’t how much an experience costs, but who takes you there. And that difference is what separates a memorable experience from an expensive bill.

How did Supernova come about, and what was its main inspiration?

Supernova was born in 2023, after twelve years working in luxury hotels and international agencies. But the real idea was born two years earlier, in the midst of a burnout.

I had been noticing something that bothered me for some time. The agencies I worked for designed the same program for different clients. The same hotel, the same suppliers, the same flamenco dinner. The client changed, but the program didn’t. It was a copy-and-paste job from a service catalog.

When my body told me I couldn’t go on like that, I understood that the problem wasn’t pace. It was method.

My background is in coaching and applied personal development. I’ve been practicing wellness, self-awareness, and personal growth in my personal life for years. And one day it became crystal clear that this way of looking at people could be applied to the design of corporate events.

Because in the end, we are all people. And a well-executed event is one of the few real opportunities a brand has to ignite a spark in those who experience it. Especially after COVID, when the need to feel part of something bigger than oneself is stronger than ever.

That’s Supernova. Experience design with applied personal vision.

What is the biggest challenge when creating experiences for international clients?

That international clients arrive with a preconceived notion of Spain that doesn’t always correspond to what Spain truly has to offer.

They think of flamenco, paella, and sunshine. And our job is to show them that behind that first layer lies a country with a cultural, artisanal, and human heritage that few European territories can match. But that heritage doesn’t appear on Google. It’s on the radar of those who have spent years building relationships with it.

The real challenge is earning the client’s trust to take them off the beaten path. When a brand agrees to swap Marbella for Sancti Petri, or replace the iconic hotel with a private estate that has never hosted a corporate event, that’s when our work begins to make sense.

Trust is the most important asset of an agency that works with international brands. Without it, we’re just another logistics provider.

What role does emotion play in designing a premium experience?

It’s the only thing that matters.

An event can be logistically flawless and nothing bad can happen. And an event can have operational imperfections and leave people deeply affected. The difference isn’t in the budget or the venue. It’s in whether the experience touched something real or not.

We recently organized an event for four hundred people from the pharmaceutical sector in Marbella. The closing wasn’t planned. The group’s CEO went up on stage unprompted, took the microphone, and spoke. He told us afterward that he did it because something at the event had brought back something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

That statement is the only KPI that matters.

Emotion isn’t decoration. It’s proof that an experience has done its job. And designing it with intention is what separates a supplier from an experience architect.

How does Supernova ensure that each event has its own unique identity?

We work with our own framework, which we call S.O.U.L. — Story, Orchestra, Unexpected, Legacy.

Story is the narrative. Every event begins with a question: What story does this brand have to tell, to these people, at this moment? Until we have the answer, we don’t touch the venue or suppliers.

Orchestra is the direction. A well-designed event has rhythms, silences, moments of tension, and moments of pause. It’s not a succession of activities. It’s a musical score.

Unexpected is the unexpected moment the brand hadn’t anticipated. A wellness session in artisanal salt flats. An olive grower personally welcoming guests in his grove. The detail that no one in the room expected and that becomes the lasting memory of the event.

Legacy is what remains after the event ends. The internal conversation that continues months later. The subtle shift in the company culture. The branding element that will continue to serve the client long after everyone has forgotten the menu.

No event we design is a copy-and-paste job. That’s the rule.

As CEO and founder, what values ​​do you consider essential for leading a company?

Three, in this order: sound judgment, consistency, and clarity.

Sound judgment, because without it, a company is nothing more than a sophisticated executor. Sound judgment is what allows you to tell a client “no” when everyone else in the market would say “yes,” right now.

Consistency, because a company that says one thing and does another ends up losing its best people—both clients and team members. And consistency is evident in the small details, not in grand pronouncements.

Clarity, because leading is, above all, about making quick decisions with limited information. Those who lead with ambiguity end up with a team that stagnates.

To those three, I would add something softer that only comes with experience: knowing when to let go. Not everything a leader could control needs to be controlled. And understanding that difference is true professional maturity.

What has been one of the biggest lessons learned leading Supernova?

That a well-built system is worth more than individual effort.

When I started, I did everything. I designed, executed, sold, presented, and closed deals. I was involved in every decision because I thought that was the guarantee of quality. But that way of working has a very low ceiling. And, above all, it’s not replicable.

The real leap came when I understood that my job isn’t to execute. It’s to build the method so that the team executes with the same criteria as me. That’s what S.O.U.L. does. That’s what our design process does. And that’s what has allowed us to go from being just another agency to being an agency with its own voice.

The lesson, put another way, is that quality isn’t sustained by effort alone. It’s sustained by a system.

What still excites you after all these years?

The conversation with the client when they understand what we’re proposing.

There’s a very specific moment in every brief when the client goes from asking for a program to understanding that they’re talking to someone who sees something they hadn’t seen. It’s a shift in perspective. The tone changes, the questions change, even the body language changes.

That moment still excites me just as much today as it did twelve years ago. Because that’s where the real work begins. Not in the proposal. In the conversation.

And because it confirms that the path I chose—prioritizing sound judgment over a catalog—is the right one. Even if it’s the slowest.

What dream would you like to fulfill with Supernova?

To make Supernova the European benchmark when an international brand or its agency is considering organizing an event in Spain, or when a Spanish company needs to extend an experience to another destination.

Not just the local option. The benchmark. The one that’s mentioned without having to search.

That requires building three things in parallel: a brand, so that the name resonates even when we’re not in the room; case studies, so that each new project builds upon the previous one; and a methodology, so that the team can grow without compromising quality.

We’re on that path. And although it may seem like a grand ambition, it’s actually concrete, daily work. Every event we deliver is another step in that direction.

What inspires you on a personal level?

Applied personal development. Everything I’ve learned in coaching, psychology, wellness, and self-awareness disciplines—not as a trend, but as a daily practice—is what sustains me as a person and as a CEO.

I’m inspired by deep conversations. Books that challenge you. Teachers who teach slowly. Moments of silence, which are almost never respected in professional settings but are where the best ideas emerge.

And I’m inspired by people who have done the inner work necessary to reach a position without losing themselves along the way. Those are the leaders I admire. And those are the ones who end up being our best clients.

Where do you think of when you travel for pleasure?

I have two ways of traveling.

On the one hand, I get to know Spain by traveling. I like to experience the destinations we take our clients to—exploring Andalusia, discovering villages, eating in small restaurants, wandering without a plan—because that’s the only honest way to know if what we’re going to offer lives up to expectations. You don’t design an experience from an office. You design it by having lived it.

On the other hand, when I travel purely for rest, I look for the exact opposite of what I do every day. My life revolves around organizing events, moving people around, filling schedules. When I go on vacation, I want to go to places where there’s nothing to do. Places where the day is focused on inner connection, well-being, disconnecting, and the absence of a schedule.

For me, in personal travel, luxury is exactly that: time without a plan.

Do you have any secret hobbies?

More than a secret hobby, I have three practices that sustain my life outside of work: sports, constant reading, and writing as a way to visualize goals.

Sports are how I release pent-up energy. A life dedicated to organizing, managing, and solving problems accumulates tension that needs a physical, not mental, outlet.

Reading is pure discipline. I read every day, without any strict order. Essays, biographies, popular science, fiction. Learning new things is the only way I know to avoid repeating what I already know.

And writing, not for publication, but to organize what I want, what I reject, and where I’m going. It’s a private practice that probably has the greatest influence on how I lead.