Italian wine ambassador has Korean origins
In the world of wine, Stevie Kim is an expert. Managing Director of Vinitaly International, today she is an ambassador for Italian wines all over the world, thanks to her ability to build bridges, narrate the story, and convey the passion of Italian producers abroad. How did she come to be a leading light for Made in Italy? That’s a complicated tale to tell in a few lines, but she tells us about her personal and professional life becoming intertwined, and eventually “untwined.”
Born in South Korea and raised in the United States, Stevie studied in the Big Apple, graduating from New York University with a Bachelor of Science degree. She discovered Italy on holiday, where she met her future husband (a doctor). She decided to stay in Italy for love and to continue her studies, which led to an MBA at SDA Bocconi.
“I started working with my husband, Riccardo Dalle Grave, who founded the Italian Association for Eating and Weight Disorders (AIDAP). I set up Positive Press in Verona to publish his books and to train doctors and chief physicians in the treatment of eating disorders using the cognitive-behavioral approach.”
But working together as husband and wife is a challenge. “I laugh now, but it’s true: I changed jobs to save our marriage. We spent too much time together. So, as soon as I had the chance, I accepted an offer to work with Veronafiere to identify strategic opportunities at an international level: this is how the Vinitaly International project was born.
It was not easy to integrate in Italy. “I was young, a woman, and a foreigner. It could not have been a more complicated combination in a city like Verona, which lacked the openness to diversity that I had found in Milan. But despite the prejudices, I never stopped; I slowly built my reputation. In America we say that you have to ‘drown out the noise,’ in other words, don’t listen too much to others, but focus on yourself and your goals. It worked. Eventually, producers and clients realized that what I could give them, though it wasn’t technical support, could help,” she adds.
As we can see, the numbers speak for Stevie. In 2017, she launched the Italian Wine Podcast, a communication and storytelling project dedicated to the world of Italian wine, which counts six million listeners. “At the time, nobody knew what podcasts were. I wanted to try something new and it worked,” she smiles. Disseminating culture and spreading new ideas: this also the dual mission of the Vinitaly International Academy she founded: a project to engage and educate new generations around the world of Italian wine.
For Stevie, the legacy of her work is fundamental, and she emphasizes: “I’m not talking about something material (success for me has nothing to do with money), but rather the impact you have on the world, what you transmit to others; it has to be something of value. I have two daughters and I tell them and all the young people I meet to experiment, make mistakes, there is nothing wrong with that. The important thing is to stay humble, always curious about the world and willing to learn. Always.”
