If you have made it this far, it is probably because of my reputation and professional career. I do believe I played a meaningful role in the Italian digital market: I was lucky enough to take part in the creation of this market from its very beginnings in 1996 with Matrix Virgilio — which some of you may remember — and then went on to hold significant roles at WPP, Accenture and Mondadori. I think I can fairly say I am regarded as one of the leading digital experts in Italy, and I have helped deliver meaningful projects and businesses. And yet I have always felt that this path — rich in experience, challenges and, in some ways, ideals — never fully belonged to me. I have never completely identified with the roles I held professionally, and I have always found it difficult to follow a linear career path.
I have always followed my passion for the project or for the idea of building something, rather than my personal goals. Along the way I realised I have a capacity for lateral and creative thinking, an ability to sense trends and scenarios in original ways — but at the same time I have personal and character limits that have greatly held back my career. For this reason I have always felt like a "different" kind of manager: in how I reason, behave, and make decisions, for better or worse. I have walked away from important positions and roles with no safety net, because the environment and the work not only failed to make me feel fulfilled but actively caused me physical suffering. In the end, in 2016, all of this led me to leave the corporate world to become an Advisor and consultant, in an attempt to find a different and more sustainable balance for myself — working on subjects I am passionate about, and ideally with people I respect.
Without dwelling on it: also in 2016 I had confirmation that something really was different about me — Asperger's syndrome. Discovering it was a flash of clarity; I revisited my whole life through another lens. From there comes my hypersensitivity, my relational difficulties, my idealism and naivety; from there comes whatever talent I may have, my way of reasoning and being — "different", often hard for others to read.
There are parts of me I have never shared except with a few close friends: photographs, drawings, writings, projects — the truest part of me, and, at least from my point of view, also the reason why, professionally — despite myself — I have had the career I have had. To innovate, in the end, you have to think differently, don't you? In my case this difference seems to be in some way native: Asperger's.
I am convinced that each of us has our own uniqueness, so there is nothing extraordinary about me — but my whole life, my feelings, sensations and reactions have in some way been shaped by the search for and understanding of this difference. Hence the desire to create this site, even though I have never enjoyed talking about myself.