A dual US-Italian citizen who was born in Italy and raised across Europe and the U.S., Valentina learned from a young age that a wide range of experiences breeds greater understanding, acceptance of diversity and creative thinking that can transform lives for the better. Her own experience includes living in 8 countries, working across 6 sectors, learning 6 languages and travelling around 5 continents. She works to leverage this background and the extensive contacts she has built along the way to help individuals and companies, especially social enterprises, build and scale strategies that provide effective solutions to social and environmental problems.

She is known for her bleeding heart, a vivacious character, workaholism (for the things she is passionate about) and an unfortunate tendency to be late for just about everything, mainly because she tries to do too much. She generally balks at meaningless small talk and prefers fruitful conversations that lead to profound discoveries or some kind of evolution.

Valentina believes that insecurity — in terms of a real or misperceived threat at either an individual or collective, national level — is the main underlying driver of most major problems in this world. After decades of working in both the public and private sectors, she feels that too few philanthropists truly understand the root causes of the issues they claim to want to resolve and too many nonprofits lack the resources and innovation to carry out sustainable solutions. Her mission is to encourage greater research into and collaboration between them. To her, a journey along the Turquoise Brick Road is about getting to the root of human desire, understanding the psychology behind it and showing people of all backgrounds and personality types that there are ways to live in harmony with this planet while still leading deeply fulfilling lives.