WHO AM I

My professional self

I have been an executive and in leading positions for more than 20 years, working with the strategy, direction and management of global and international organisations, running operations in 6 continents, with reporting teams of more than a 100 people, and accounts over the 100M $. In 2012, after the birth of my beautiful daughter, I left corporates and I turned my golden skills to the not for profit sector, trying to scale that too. This led me to work more and more in the public sector, with governments and NGOs. My cookie has always been leading transitions and transformation, change without losing the soul (which tends to be the human capital, really, and the intelligent network of relations it forms), being it a gigantic business outsourcing process or the preservation of a tiny world heritage library somewhere in the mountains. I think that words like profit, business model, scaling, impact, sustainability, leadership, commitment, and resources can be empty marketing mirrors for the fool, or can be lived through, by people truly caring for each other and creating the conditions for collaboration and harmony, inside out, everywhere. I owe everything to my colleagues, definitely invisible souls in this world made of big names and egos, who have guided me the sweet and the bitter way and taught me everything I know.   

My scientific self

I have been a nerd for as long as I can remember. By age 14 my journal reports already a stunning number of 350 titles read, till the end, of course, or it ain't fair. I began my formal education studying Humanities: Classical Studies (Greek, Latin), Philosophy and Social Sciences. In the late 90s my brain got hooked on computers and networks, and that's how I became a certified Microsoft engineer and started running IT projects, covering networks, databases, infrastructure, processes, first in my country and then around the globe. I was trained as a Project Manager, later as a Programme Director, and ITIL, Prince, PMP, Agile, became my mother tongue. When I was involved in the not for profit sector, my Social Sciences background came back, in terms of setting sustainable strategies (from human trafficking to the circular economy). At the same time I kept nurturing my studies: I felt I could really come in action with Psychology, specifically Business Psychology. I have been leading workshops and laboratories (and 1to1s) adopting Coaching, Systemic Approach and Constellation Theory, Theory U, Barret Values, Management Drives, MBTI, and Embodiment, now for a few years, and I am extremely happy with the way these tools can really function, and make people progress in a satisfactory way. My readings include consistently modern physics, artificial intelligence, history, history of arts, cognitive sciences, neuroplasticity, musicology, and strange esoteric stuff written centuries ago. I think we stand on the shoulders of giants, and we should never stop learning from all the knowledge which has already been harvested, and continuously is all around us since the beginning of history and do our best to make it work with what we have at hand every day.

My artistic self

Art can change the world. "Artists can see the reality that science will catch up with a few years later". It couldn't be more true. I think I was born in a family of artists who never had the social chance to live performing and, to balance things out, were gifted (or punished) by the birth of a very structure driven kid like me. Music, dance, storytelling, comedy, and crafts where instilled into my every pore as I was growing up, in equal dose as family dramas and the impermanence of joy. I love art and artists and my idea of regeneration inevitably involves jazz, architecture, a museum and a good fiction writer. My body being the only instrument I can play, I am a dancer, but as I wasn't given the fate to dance for a living, I have learnt to communicate also with words, roughly in 8 languages. I write mostly poetry (and volumes of corporate strategies, processes, and plans), but I have also curated the copy writing of texts and captions for my artists friends. I wish I could be a cinematographer, I love clowning for children, and I don't exclude any of these becoming my next career turn.

My spiritual self

I am since 25 years a practitioner of Dzogchen and Vajrayana, under the all encompassing guidance of my teachers, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, Yeshi Namkhai, Lopön Tenzin Namdak. 
Chögyam Trumpa, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Dzongsar Khyentse Norbu and Pema Chödrön are teachers whom unfortunately I have not met but of great inspiration to my practice. I practice daily, attend collective retreats a couple of times per year, and personal longer retreats more often. I consider my fellows brothers and sisters.
In 1998 I travelled to the Amazon, and stayed for a couple of months in the Shipibo Indios village of San Francisco, Yarinacocha, when clothes, Spanish, and hundreds dollars shamanic matinees for the greedy westerners were not yet on the menu. There, I had my further life epiphany, thanks to the forest and my teacher Don Mateo Arevalo. To date I am still very interested and active in the psychedelic research, clinical and academic. A bit less in the above mentioned matinees, and their wild cultural (and ecological) appropriation.
I don't know if so many years of inner evolutionary work are good or bad, maybe I have cooked into boring stew, but I feel something is there, very lively, and immense, when it feeds back into the way I can be useful, nurture, and help develop, myself and others.

FACTS

Countries where I have worked
Netherlands, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, China, India, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Dubai, New Zealand, Brasil, Peru, Cuba 

Countries where I have led remote operations
The above plus: Japan, Colombia, Cambodia, Ghana, South Africa, Australia, US, Mexico

Industries where I have operated and clients I have served:
ITC and Technology: Unisys Corporation, Siemens, Cisco Systems, ST Micro
Pharmaceutics: Ciba, Novartis  
Retail solutions: NCR EMEA
Consumer and Luxury Goods: Unilever, COOP, JohnsonDiversey, Moet Hennecy, Bennet    
Finance: Capital One,  Intrum Justitia, Visa, Paypal  
Tourism: Sabre
Sustainability: Circle Economy 
Human rights and development: Telefono Azzurro, INHOPE Foundation, Associazione Colore, WeProtect 
Culture and Education: Shang Shung Foundation
Broadcasting: MTV Networks  
Governmental: EC, UN, Europol, Interpol

Languages I (roughly) speak or read in (in order of fluency):
Sicilian, Italian, English, Spanish, Nederlands, French, ancient Greek and Latin

My latest jobs
COO/CFO - Director of Operations
Global Development and Network Expansion Director
Transition and Transformation Director

MBTI
ENFJ

See what they say about me on LinkedIn.

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