CEO By 30: B-School Was The Key For These Young Professionals

Eliomaria Narducci: “I proved with my daily work and dedication that results can be reached by working hard”

Q&A with Eliomaria Narducci, MiM graduate of Frankfurt School of Finance & Management

How did the Frankfurt MiM change the course of your career? Where do you think you would be right now if you had NOT gotten the degree?

Regarding my current career step, I have a lot to thank to the Frankfurt School. I got in contact with my current employer, ITKAM, because of an event with the former Italian Minister of Justice co-organised by ITKAM at the Frankfurt School. In that occasion I was able to meet some of the representatives of the Italian community in Germany, the diplomatic and public organizations as well as the top managers, professionals and entrepreneurs working between the two countries.

It all began with a question. I went to that conference as FS Student Council’s speaker representing the university. In 2015 the youth unemployment in Italy was at record levels. Because of my role at the FS and my personal experience of expatriating to find better opportunities, I asked the minister, who was explaining during the conference the new Italian reforms, what was the government agenda for the younger generations. From this question a debate started, and I was asked what Italy could learn from my international experience that could help improving the situation in the country. I have explained that in Germany I was given immediately the possibility to work together with very experienced professionals and that, it is the mix of knowledge and vision of experienced people, together with the energies and willingness to do and to make mistakes of the younger generations, that makes the organizations go forward and improve. My speech was actually heard. Soon I was invited for lunch by the president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Germany who offered me the possibility of starting a collaboration with them.

Prof. Emanuele Gatti, former CEO EMEALA & Global Chief Strategist of Fresenius Medical Care, was in 2015 just appointed president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Germany. ITKAM was facing in that moment one of the toughest crises even experienced in more than 100 years of existence. I remember clearly that during that lunch Prof. Gatti explained to me the problems that led to the crises. He could not hire anybody given the situation, but he said to me, “I think you are the right person to work on this challenge, if you are interested you have carte blanche, you can start tomorrow.” I remember going home and calling my family to elaborate on the offer. My dad said that this story was so interesting that he wished to see the end of it. Then he paused and said, “Remember that in this home if anybody of us ever has a problem, a pasta plate will always be granted!” I quit at Norma Group and started as a “consultant” by ITKAM.

The situation I found upon my arrival at ITKAM was as described by President Gatti. The objective operational difficulties and the total lack of liquidity were the results of bad management and recent reforms to the system of the Italian Chambers of Commerce that led to losses accumulated in the previous years. The first months at the chamber were tough. I had to restructure the whole organization from the fundamentals while the business was still running at continuous losses. We were losing subsidies and our main clients at the same time. We were cutting costs while developing and generating new revenues streams. I was restructuring the debts of ITKAM during the days we had to move the offices from the old and not functional ones. The daily busy schedule was accompanied by the writing of the master theses, at night, when nobody was around in the office. At the end of 2015 we recorded the first break-even after years. In February of 2016 the supervisory board of the ITKAM appointed a 24 years old, newly graduated, as CEO of the chamber. The restructuring of ITKAM continued for the next years, and is a successful story resulting in a revenue growth rate of 50% since 2016.

Did you ever encounter someone telling you that you are too young to go to graduate business school? Too young to be CEO? Too young for other things? What is your message to others who might be in a similar situation as yours?

The first words that come in my mind to answer this question are responsibility and determination. Obviously, I was given the responsibility to restructure an organization that was older than 100 years old and with very important relationships both with the public and private sectors. At the same time, being 24 years old, I wanted to prove to everybody that I could make it. As I entered ITKAM as a project manager, I realized which were the real problems that created the difficult financial situation. I wrote down a restructuring plan and I was not afraid to present it to the board. It has been accepted. I must add that without the trust of some key employees of ITKAM who worked together with me since the start, the project would have been much more difficult. These people became afterwards the managers of the chamber.

I recall that when I was playing basketball at a young age, although I am almost 2 meters tall, there came a moment when I was told I was too short. Then, when at 17 years old I moved to study abroad, I was told I was too foreign for doing certain things, and definitively during my career I was told several times I was too young for the job. I always gave the same answer, I ignored those comments and I proved with my daily work and dedication that results can be reached by working hard.

Where do you think you will be in three, four, five years, and are you interested in getting an MBA or other graduate degree?

As of today, ITKAM continues in its historical role as reference point for economic relationships between Italy and Germany. We operate among politics, public administrations, business associations, and companies. The chamber is composed of three business units: the activities of the association such as conferences, seminars, and networking; the public-funded projects such as those aiming at promoting “Made in Italy” in Germany; the internationalizations projects between the two countries funded by Italian and German ministries, regions, public organizations, and the European Union; and lastly the consultancy to small and medium-sized enterprises that want to export in Italy or Germany. In 2020, the pandemic had a very hard impact on the chamber, but we were able, thanks to our business model, to soften the effects of the decreasing revenues given by the difficulties of both Italian and German firms to export. We are continuing working, always trying to develop new projects that can help the recovery of the German and Italian economies.

I am particularly proud of the achievements of ITKAM and of the team composing it today. 2020 and 2021 were also years of great changes for me. Suddenly I stopped flying to all of our offices in Germany, Italy, and Brussels. The conferences and meetings all around Europe became digital. Unexpectedly, I had less busy schedules. There is a personal project that I started a couple of years ago that I am happy I could work on this last year. The current situation, despite the great negative impacts, is allowing me to work on my Ph.D. in economics, management and accounting from LIUC Università Cattaneo that I hope I will soon finish, with my thesis on the topic of internationalization.

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