Fabiola's Lifelong Mission to Empower Women

“I am a firm believer in balancing life and work, especially for women. I’ve tried to share this approach with them to throughout my career. After a life as a senior executive at IBM, I am now retired but always on the move: I dedicate my time to volunteering, theater, and mentoring young women.” After graduating from Bocconi University, Fabiola Tisbini worked for 34 years at IBM, serving in management roles in marketing, sales and sales strategy, both in Italy and abroad.

“I studied finance, but I realized it wasn’t for me. I loved marketing and sales strategies. I chose IBM because it was a big multinational and it allowed me to enter the commercial sector,” she adds, explaining that understanding what you don’t like also helps you to find your direction in your professional life. At IBM, Tisbini gradually moved up the career ladder, managing sales divisions and business units in Italy and Southern Europe until she arrived at EMEA. “To be successful at work, you have to have fun; I’ve always needed change, challenges and new stimuli,” she adds. Shortly afterwards, at the age of 33, she was appointed to a senior position in London as Director of Channel Distribution Management for EMEA. “I was one of the first women in Europe to head business areas that were the exclusive domain of male colleagues. New approaches, partnerships, teamwork, innovative ideas were needed; being a woman, being different, being imaginative and courageous gave me an edge,” she adds.

In 1997, she joined the European Women Leadership Board to support and promote diversity and the development of female talent. “In tandem with my work as an executive, I designed program to promote women in management positions.” From her connections with colleagues in other European countries, especially in Scandinavia, Tisbini knows that Italy is lagging far behind in terms of gender equality. “It was the first time I did the numbers at a national level: there were very few of us women managers. That’s when my motivation to change things started to grow: I had to help my female colleagues move up in the company, to see them find their space.” 

Back in Italy, in the meantime, Tisbini became a mother. She says: “IBM was very sensitive to women’s issues, so I was lucky. I didn’t have to make any big sacrifices and I had time to be with my daughter. But it’s not like that for everyone, which is deeply wrong. Motherhood is our right and our duty to society.” That’s why Tisbini extended IBM’s positive and inclusive actions to the outside world. 

“My cause went above and beyond; it was about the culture of the country,” she says. One of her gifts to the younger generation was to promote the NERD project, an acronym that loosely translates to: “Isn’t It Women’s Work?” initiated by women computer scientists at IBM and aimed at introducing high school students to STEM subjects, from computer science to coding. She concludes with by encouraging young women to “fight every day for your rights, don’t take them for granted, always let everyone see what you’re doing. Be enthusiastic, have fun, network, and support each other. And at home? Teach your friends, husbands, brothers, and children to be a team, even when it comes to household chores, from laundry to doing the dishes.”