The Secret? Always Engage the Team
“I always knew that I wanted to travel in my career. After my studies I discovered a great passion for new technologies: I find it fascinating to understand how they can be applied in business and in different sectors.” Veronica Diquattro is now President of B2C Europe at Omio, the platform for rail, bus, air, and ferry travel. She came to the role after serving as CEO Global Markets at Dazn and Managing Director at Spotify.
Born in Ragusa, Sicily, she has a degree in Economics from Bologna University and a Masters in International Management from Bocconi. A path that led to her first internship in the marketing department of L’Oréal. “The world of marketing has always fascinated me, but I was young and wanted to see the world. So when I got the chance, I packed my bags and flew to Peru. I went to Lima, to work for Loki Hostel, tasked with following the digital development of the hotel brand in South America, from Bolivia to Argentina,” she adds.
But her journey didn’t end there. Diquattro then flew to Dublin to join the Google team, in the division that specialized in growing applications. From 2011 to 2012, she was in charge of launching Google Play in Italy and supporting its development in southern European markets. “It was great,” she says, “because I found myself in a team that was a kind of start-up within Google: you were working with people with international backgrounds and you really felt like you were doing innovation.”
A spirit of innovation that later led her to Spotify in 2012, when the company was still expanding. It was the chance to come back to Italy, where I would be responsible for building the market from the ground up. The historic launch then took place during Sanremo,” the famous Italian music festival. At Spotify, Diquattro quickly moved up the ladder from Market Lead for Italy to Managing Director of the streaming platform from 2016 to 2018. In this role, she handled the brand’s growth strategy across 16 countries, including her beloved South America, as well as Eastern Europe. To manage and coordinate global teams, Diquattro explains that she’s adopted a leadership style based on trust: “I try to keep my team engaged at all times. If you have very smart people on your team, you try to communicate the objectives to them in a transparent way. And then focus on developing their skills. I try to remove any obstacles they may have with the idea that their success is mine too.”
The move to Dazn, and then Omio, was prompted by Diquattro’s curiosity about innovation. “I’ve always been fascinated by change. At Dazn, I wanted to understand how digital innovation could impact the sports industry, and at Omio, the impact in the tourism sector. As a passionate traveler who has explored the world and lived abroad, and given my problem-solving approach, it was a great challenge for me to take on.” As a woman at the top, Diquattro says she hasn’t encountered any serious discrimination, apart from a few initial prejudices, which she overcame thanks to her performance and the results she brought to the table.
“Well, if I had to give any advice to today’s young women, I would tell them never to have self-doubt, and to always be aware of their own abilities.” Perhaps that’s another reason why Diquattro is part of A4W and Impact Angels: programs designed to support start-ups by women with a high social and, of course, technological impact.
