Chiara, from passion for numbers to Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy

“Whenever I can, I take my daughters to conferences because I want people to see that I am a professional and a mother. And that it’s very normal.” Chiara Scotti was appointed Vice-Director at the Bank of Italy in late 2023 after an international career culminating in her role of Vice-President of the Dallas Federal Reserve. It has been a career that began with a passion for numbers as a young girl. 

“I wanted to study Economics,” she says, “but with a focus on quantitative aspects. So, I enrolled at Bocconi, where I specialized in Monetary Economics and International Finance.” 

For Scotti, a pivotal time was her Erasmus study-abroad experience in London in 1997. “I was in my final year and that trip opened a lot of doors for me. Talking to professors, I realized that I wanted to continue my studies and do my PhD in the US because it was the best place to specialize in Economics.”

So, Scotti did her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, and in the meantime she started a family too. “I got married,” she says, “and had my first child. I remember a lot of people, from professors to colleagues, telling me it was not the right time. But I was determined, and I have never regretted it.”

“Being a mother has helped me a lot in my work,” she says. “It gave me a new perspective on life’s priorities and forced me to be super-efficient because I had so little time. I would put my daughter to bed and then work late into the night on my dissertation.” The decision to stay in the US was linked to her husband’s work; he was a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Therefore, Scotti looked for a job at the Federal Reserve in nearby Washington, and after sending in her application “on paper,” she specifies, she was hired. She says: “I was surprised by how simple the selection process was. They look at your CV, they evaluate your research paper (and what everyone calls a job market paper), you go through a two-stage interview, and then you get hired.” 

This is how she came to work at the Federal Reserve, where she has stayed for 18 years and where she still works in Dallas in a very high-level position. 

“It was a great satisfaction to be promoted on the basis of merit, recognized in the field. With my current role, this is how it went: they were looking for a research director and they contacted me because I had the right profile for the job.” But the decision to move was complicated by family logistics. “My older daughter was studying at Bocconi, my second was in high school in Washington with my husband. I would have had to move miles away. But the opportunity was too good to miss, so now we live in three different places,” she giggles. For Scotti, satisfaction comes from being able to work where research meets policy, talking to governors, local authorities and international bodies. 

As for gender, she explains that it’s a matter of time. “I was always one of the few women in the room, but at the Fed I have to say that I felt genderless. The important thing was to do my job.” True, back then women did not even get paid maternity leave. She says: “Today we’ve gone a long way. My experience was difficult. When I had my second daughter, there were complications. I almost died. But I could only take three months of unpaid leave because there was no other option.” As a woman at the top, Scotti advises young women to study hard “because competence gives you more freedom.” And don’t be afraid to ask for and look for flexibility once you have children.