Not a career, but an ongoing earthquake
“In my life I’m always seeking change; I wasn’t made to stand still. I love to do things I’ve never done before.” Alessandra Priante is now the European Director of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Madrid-based UN agency that promotes global, sustainable, universally accessible, and responsible tourism. Priante’s career has been about “doing and undoing,” so much so that she describes it as a journey akin to “a constant earthquake.”
In her words: “I spent part of my childhood in New York and arrived in Italy in Terni, bilingual, speaking Italian with an American accent. I was a bit of a nerd too. Fitting in was complicated; I always felt different, but in a way, I turned that into a strength.”
Priante did her higher education in Italy, graduating with a degree in Business Administration from Bocconi University, but she felt like she wasn’t cut out for a traditional career in finance. Aptly versatile and a self-described creative nerd, she started working in banking (specifically investment banking) for a large international group in Milan, her home town. It was an experience that led her to a turning point. “What I remember about those years was the frantic pace; I was always in the office. In a year’s time, I was on the verge of a breakdown, so I quit. My family was totally shocked when I told them my decision during the Christmas holidays,” she adds.
In the midst of an existential and professional crisis, she turned to Bocconi as an attempt to refocus, but “the placement service said that my résumé was too complicated and too varied, too many interests, I was difficult to place. My passions ranged from music – I love electronic and Depeche Mode – to cinema, to a knack for numbers and solid vertical skills in finance.”
Nevertheless, the placement office did help her realize that she needed to make a clean break with the past. So Priante decided to work in public institutions and the cultural sector, a world more closely aligned with her values and passions. She says: “I joined the Ministry of Culture in 2002 in the Cinema Directorate. I was tasked with restructuring public finances and I had to build a team and formulate strategies from scratch. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
Combining her financial skills with her ambition to make a concrete impact, Priante next position was Director of the Ministry’s Research and Studies Unit (which she created) and was in charge of all international relations, both bilateral and multilateral: from her great work on the UNESCO Convention to the negotiations with the European Union, from systematizing public accounts in the audiovisual sector to creating a tax credit system in the cinema sector, which is still in place and has allowed many national and international audiovisual productions to flourish.
Priante then became a technical expert who survived every change of government in Italy until, during a trip to Dubai, she fell in love with the Gulf and convinced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to let her set up her dream project: from 2010 to 2015, she was the government’s cultural expert for the Gulf. Which meant traveling: United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait. Her mission? To promote Italian culture and education.
Later she returned to the Ministry of Cultural Heritage as head of multilateral international relation And then, for the love of change, she took another leap: she applied to the UNWTO, where in 2019 she was chosen from around 200 candidates from all over the world. “I jumped at the chance to work in a new and even more international context, and I am now in charge of a sector that is experiencing a post-pandemic recovery,” she says. Her advice to the new generations she teaches as a lecturer at Luiss University in Rome? To be hungry, but be patient. Never stop, and get away from labels and comfort zones.
