As a Researcher, You Learn Something Every Day of Your Life

“A feature of my career is that my successes always happen when I bounce back after major disappointments.” Silvia Ardagna is Chief European Economist at Barclays. Born in Naples and raised nearby in Caserta, she spent her last two years of high school on a scholarship at the United World College in Trieste. 
“It was the first turning point. I lacked inspiration and that’s where I started to study Economics. After graduating, I set my sights on Bocconi – a degree in Political Economics. I wanted to work in international development.” 

Her Bocconi years were a time of tremendous personal growth for Ardagna. During her studies, she had the opportunity to go to the United States for an internship, with the encouragement of Professor Francesco Giavazzi. This was followed by a Master’s degree from Bocconi in 1995. Her next step was a doctorate...“ on the advice of my sister, who told me: if you don’t do it, you’re a loser.” In the US, Ardagna had the opportunity to carry out research, earning her PhD in Economics from Boston College in 2000. She also attended classes at Harvard as a visiting student. 

“This incredible world gave me an intense passion for research. You learn every day of your life. And it gave me a methodological approach to work,” she adds. One paper at a time, Ardagna gained experience at Harvard, where she became an Associate Professor and worked with many colleagues. “The best thing was sharing ideas, and there was no hierarchy, as if we were all on the same side. The senior faculty helped us grow, and that’s what I’m trying to do now with the new generation,” she adds. 

Academic life allowed her to find time and space for her personal life. “During those years I got married and had children, and my husband was working in Italy. In a company, I think it would have been more complicated. Not that being alone in Boston with two children, aged two and five, was easy. I used to take them with me to conferences,” she laughs.

In 2012 came the decision to converge on London as a family and to go private. “I agreed with my husband that we would both look for work in London. It was the year that Greece was about to renegotiate its debt and I remember doing all these interviewing and thinking, ‘They’ll never take me.’” She thought wrong. Ardagna started as a senior economist at Bank of America, where she clashed with a world where research was possible but every aspect of the job was kept secret, the antithesis of academia. After a difficult year of moving and adjusting to new rhythms, she moved to Goldman Sachs, where she became a managing director after nine years.  “It started almost as a joke and ended up as a career,” she says.

In 2021, she moved to Barclays, where she now coordinates a team of young people “whom I love to teach.” From analyzing changes in economic policy to liaising with the financial world. On the subject of women in the job market, she says: “In academia, apart from being called Alesina’s boy, I never noticed any gender discrimination among researchers. What counted was the work we did or the quality of the paper.  In the world of private business, on the other hand, it has happened, but you get over it.” Good professional relationships help. Not surprisingly, she advises young women to find “mentors you can learn from and who really believe in you.”