I am an only child, with a ENTP personality. Up to the age of 18 I lived in Soleto, a municipality part of the griko ethnic community of Southern Italy. Since 2014 I live in Brussels, Belgium, after having lived in Lecce, London, Sheffield, Rome and Milan.
Digital Marketing
Communication and media have always captured my interest since very young. I started to work for local radio stations and newspapers as a teenager, in the second half of the 90s. With the arrival of internet, I transformed a passion into a profession. I built my first website in 1998. In 2002, a student portal I created for my university student association in Lecce (ProgettoUniversitas) was the runner-up among the best web communities at the Italian Web Awards, just one year before Facebook was born.
Presenting at Digital First, Brussels, 2019
From 2010 to 2016 I worked at the British Council, the UK cultural organisation, starting as Business Development Manager, then Marketing Manager and, eventually, Digital Manager for the European region, moving from Rome to Milan and then to Brussels.
Later, among various roles, I have been in charge of digital marketing for a Belgian fintech active in equity crowdfunding and venture capital, supporting innovative and sustainable start-ups (MyMicroInvest, now Spreds). As a digital marketing consultant, I also worked for a multinational corporation in the recruiting sector (ManpowerGroup), for a Swiss law firm focused on banking (Caputo & Partners) and as a social media manager in the financial services sector (SWIFT) and a corporate venture development firm (Bundl) as a growth marketer and venture builder, working mostly in the banking sector (HelloBank / BNP Paribas Fortis).
In 2017 I founded the digital marketing consulting agency Oltre.Digital. Thanks to an extensive network of expertise, we provide advice in various areas including SEO, web analytics, online advertising, social media marketing, user experience, lead generation, conversion rate optimization, influencer marketing, performance marketing, web design, e-commerce. In addition to client services, we have been developing our own projects such as Solvy.Store, Wireless Education, Doping Deals, ExtraTopping, 1common Club and Spaccio Italia.
Since 2005 I have developed a passion for photography. After working extensively with Canon digital cameras, in recent years I have increasingly used smartphones, including faster mobile post-production that gained prominence over Adobe Photoshop. I try to make iconic images capable of identifying stories and places.
In 2020 my Flickr account has reached +10M photo views and some of my works have been published by prestigious media channels and institutions including UNESCO, the Carabinieri, the European Commission, the London School of Economics, Forbes.
During a political debate at the Imperial College in London, 2018
Debating about political issues has interested me since a young age. After support for libertarian movements battling for civil rights and experience as a student representative at the University of Lecce (now Università del Salento, Italy), I have been close to the Five Star Movement since its very start. In 2018, after being selected through an online vote, I was among the candidates for the Chamber of Deputies in the European constituency, obtaining over 6000 preferences (thanks all!) resulting the second of the non-elected, while the movement resulted as the most voted in Italy with about 33%. After this short but intense experience, I decided to quit any political participation, focusing on professional goals.
Geography
When a child, I was intrigued by geographical atlases, maps, elements of the territory, singularities and statistics.
In 2009 I obtained a PhD in Economic Geography at the University of Bari (Italy), the culmination of a research path from which eventually I moved away embracing new professional territories. I am a member of the Italian Geographic Society.
I write whenever I feel the need for years. In 2012 I experimented self-publishing with a collection titled “Glossario del Nulla” (Glossary of Nothing). Its content, together with more recent stuff, is also published on the personal blog postplex available also on Facebook and Instagram.
Given the passion for geography and photography, travel is a natural consequence. I hope I can find the time to tell something about my travel experiences, trying to inspire or help those people ready to leave. For now, the traces of the places I visited – about 40 countries – are in some photo galleries published on Flickr, Instagram and Tumblr as well as on Swarm. I’m also on Couchsurfing as a guest or host, but quite little.
I am a proud member of some hiking groups in Belgium such as the Brussels Hiking Group. Although Belgium has no mountains, it can be quite hilly in Wallonia and has nice routes. I also cycle quite regularly – it’s been my main mean of transport for years.
Top peaks reached so far: Mount Toubkal in Morocco and Volcano Acatenango in Guatemala.