I grew up in Italy, very close to Lake Como, in a working-class family—my mother worked in a factory and my dad was a nurse. I spent a lot of my childhood skiing, swimming, and hiking. When I wasn’t exploring the outdoors, I spent most of my time working on my uncle and aunt’s farm or playing soccer. I think both of these pastimes helped me learn the value of hard work and the importance of being a team player.
When it came time for college, I headed to the Polytechnic University of Milan. I earned my masters in engineering and operations, then started out my career as a material manager at Black & Decker. I worked in engineering for the beginning of my career, then moved into operations management for several years before joining Amazon in 2011. My first project as general manager of Amazon Italia was to lead a very small team in launching Amazon’s operations in Italy. After the successful launch in my home country, I went on to help scale operations in Spain and France, building out our operations in the South European region.
I’ve had a lot of different roles and lived in a lot of different places while working with Amazon. I now live in Luxembourg where I work as the vice president of North America and EU Customer Fulfillment and Global Operations Services. In my current role, I oversee everything from real estate, reliability, supply chain procurement to engineering, security, and compliance for operations and fulfillment centers in North America and Europe. Leading large teams to accomplish lofty goals has taught me just how important it is to build a solid foundation of effective leadership skills. If you’re in a leadership position or aspiring to lead a team one day, here are five of my best tips to develop your leadership style.
