Many lives, one thread.
I was born in Milan and grew up in Rome in the 1970s and 1980s, years of political and social upheaval that shaped how I see the world.
My first business was travel. For 15 years I built and ran travel companies, ending with Viaggiare Network, which grew into one of Italy’s largest travel agency chains, with offices in New York, Rome and Milan. Before most people had heard of the internet, we connected hundreds of agencies to our own reservation database on American Airlines’ Sabre system. We let clients check prices by phone and launched one of Italy’s first travel websites. Travel took me from Thailand to Burundi, and to Lagos.
In New York I sold the travel business and started a web development company, with a team of programmers in Bucharest. We built online stores, utility company websites and printing platforms, until the recession after 9/11 closed it.
I then spent 16 years in the IT department of the New York State Insurance Fund, as a project manager and head of Access Control. At the same time, in 2008, Marc Mommaas and I opened the New York Jazz Workshop. It became my life’s work, and the place where music, business and technology finally meet.
After COVID I refitted Aeolus, a 27-foot sailboat, and sailed her down the East Coast to the Bahamas: the Abacos, Eleuthera, Cat Island and the Exumas. She is in Georgia now, waiting for an electric motor.
The thread through all of it: I like to build things that work, and then make them run on their own.