Her Story
About Lidia
I'm from Italy, specifically from Milan and Monza, and I started my career in tourism working at a luxury hotel in Greece. I loved it there, but I was looking for something more, so I joined a Master's program in Marketing in Boston and then won a scholarship to continue my studies in San Francisco, where I've been living for 4 years now. I completed a business analytics program that was like an MBA, and afterward I worked in career development at my university, connecting students with businesses here in Silicon Valley. I founded a podcast called Voices of Hope where I interviewed people to help students get the best out of university services. It got so many views that my university acquired it and it became the official podcast for Hult International Business School. That experience led me to my current role at Innovit, a governmental project where we bring Italian startups to Silicon Valley. I felt this was truly my mission because Italy is often seen as a traditional country, but we wanted to show that Italy is also very innovative with bright minds and interesting companies. As Head of Operations and Communication Manager, I create communities of mentors, do business matching between mentors and startups, and handle all the logistics to ensure flawless execution of our programs. I've even built an AI agent that does business matching by evaluating startup profiles and needs. When I started, I was employee number three, and now we're eight people. My team has grown from just me to 3-5 people depending on peak times. I'm very proud of how we've implemented AI into our daily work through our weekly 'How Can We Work Better?' meetings where we evaluate AI tools and optimize our processes. This allows us to focus on the details that matter and provide white-glove treatment to our startups and mentors.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lidia
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Dream big, and things are possible. When I started my career in tourism, I thought that was the maximum I could achieve, but then I realized there's a whole world to explore. I would say believe in yourself, and be more specific than just generic advice. I think women, especially in Italy where we have a more masculine mentality or culture, are often discouraged because women are not supposed to do certain jobs. But women are capable of anything if we just believe in that. A younger woman could really achieve many things, and the only tool that she needs is confidence in herself. I'm actually mentoring a student who came up to me after a panel and asked me to be her mentor. Every conversation we have, she's seeking little advices or guardrails that could leave an impact on her career, doing things now that could impact more in the future.
02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Generosity and curiosity are the most important values to me. San Francisco taught me about generosity, and it's always progressive and outstanding to see how many people come to you and say 'how can I help you?' with no interest in taking benefits. People here are genuinely interested in helping you. A mentor of ours explained it well: in Italy, we consider our help as a pie, and if I give you one piece, I'm left with my pie minus one piece. But here in Silicon Valley, if I give you a piece of my pie, the pie enlarges because now you're giving me yours too. I don't expect you to give me back anything, but I'm doing it no matter how successful you're going to be. I think it's a beautiful value that Silicon Valley taught me. Curiosity is also essential because it gives you that extra spark you need to deal with difficulties or dig deeper. Fall in love with the problem, be curious why that was a problem, dig deeper and search for other perspectives and people's opinions. Be curious about learning and innovating yourself and learning other ways to do things. When I'm hiring someone new for my team, curiosity is always the thing I'm searching for.
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