Commitment, listening and respect the rules of Elisabetta Magistretti

A life spent striving for independence while respecting her own limitations. This is how Elisabetta Magistretti tells her story, which led her to be first CEO of UniCredit and then non-executive director of a number of companies, most recently Brembo, Smeg, and Mediobanca. 
In her words: “After high school, I chose Economics and Business at Bocconi. My idea was to continue in academics, as my professor at the time suggested. But then I got an offer to start a really new job at an international company; it was the early 1970s. I decided to join Arthur Andersen to do auditing. With the very clear warning, and the consequent responsibility, that I could be the last woman they hired because the ones who had joined the company before me had left in short order because the work was quite consuming.” 

But Magistretti didn’t lose heart. In fact, she stayed with the company from 1972 to 2001 and then moved to Unicredit. “I have always been committed to tackling new things by learning something every day and applying myself to the best of my abilities. Over fifty years, I can say that I have seen a lot of changes,” she adds.

Of those years, Magistretti remembers there were no women role models in her field; her colleagues were almost all men. “We boomers of today were the first to enter the job market back then. I have a hard time coming up with good examples of women role models. However, I can think of Marisa Bellisario on the one hand and Mother Teresa of Calcutta on the other – formidable. Ah and Meryl Streep, too,” she smiles.
To help her stay on the right track in the competitive environment of banking and beyond, she had her North Star. Or rather three. “Commitment, listening, and respect for others. These are the values that have accompanied me throughout my career. And I’ve always tried to learn from my colleagues who were better prepared and more up-to-date than me, even the younger ones. This interaction was necessary for me to make my decisions in a clear-headed way,” she adds. Expertise in the field did the rest.
Then, practically on the verge of retiring, she decided to start again with a new, challenging experience. Her courage helps her face the job market regardless of her age. Among the titles that tell her story are roles as independent non-executive director at Pirelli, Gefran, and Luxottica from 2011 to 2020.

To today’s students she says: “Although I absolutely realize that their life is much harder today than it was for my generation, my advice is to ‘stay tuned.’” Work smart, and never forget that the most important thing in your professional and non-professional life is to “always have a good character.”