On May 26th, Professional Women’s Association of Rome jointly with Rome Business School host a Conference about Blockchain & Art. Five experts on an interesting debate on the wide-ranging impact of new technologies on art: Francesca Fini is an Italian artist focused on experimental cinema, digital animation, new media, installation, and performance art, Anastasia Angelova entrepreneur and investor in the blockchain space, Enrico Boverino VP PreSales at VMware for EMEA, Gaspare Dori, Partner at CastaldiPartners, Catherine Edoardova Costaggiu – Programming Director and Vice-President at Professional Women’s Association of Rome; Senior Manager at CastaldiPartners and two speakers from RBS, Antonio Ragusa, Dean of Rome Business School, and Valerio Mancini, Professor and Director of the Research Center of the Rome Business School.
Francesca Fini is an Italian artist focused on experimental cinema, digital animation, new media, installation, and performance art.
Her live projects are often addressing issues related to the relationship between public and private spaces, between the show and the audience, representation and interaction, but also reflect on the influences of society on gender and women’s issues and the distortions in the perception of beauty produced by the market and mainstream media. Both live and non-live works are a mix of traditional media, lo-fi technology, interaction design devices, generative audio, and video.
As a pure performance artist, she was part of the iconic first edition of the Venice International Performance Art Week, featuring among the others the work of Valie Export, Jan Fabre, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovic and Hermann Nitsch. In 2014 and 2016 she was artist in residence at Bob Wilson’s Watermill Center in New York. In 2016 she wrote and directed Ophelia did not drown; an experimental feature film based on the hybridization between found-footage (from the national archive Istituto Luce Cinecittà) and original contemporary performative language, considered by legendary movie art critic Adriano Aprà, one of the best Italian experimental art film of all times.
She is cited by Treccani Encyclopedia as one of the greatest exponents of cyber-performance in Italy.
Anastasia Angelova is VP of Strategy and Growth at nft42. As a serial entrepreneur and investor in Web3 companies, Anastastasia has been involved in the blockchain space for over 5 years. She is currently the VP of Strategy and Growth at nft42 and nameless.io – an NFT tooling project. Previously, she has been with Outlier Ventures, Nexo, and has co-founded several tech start-ups in the past. Anastasia is a supporter and ambassador of several #womenintech organisations and initiatives.
Gaspare Dori, Partner at CastaldiPartners is a qualified French and Italian lawyer. He has over twenty-five years of experience in assisting companies in complex M&A projects and transactions. He has worked on more than 150 acquisitions, joint ventures and reorganization transactions. Since 2008, Gaspare is a partner in the international law firm CastaldiPartners.
Before joining CastaldiPartners, Gaspare Dori was Counsel at the law firm Clifford Chance, where he worked for more than twelve years, first in Rome and then in Paris. Gaspare Dori’s client base includes exclusively companies, both large and multinationals companies and small and medium enterprises (“SMEs”).
Gaspare Dori teaches Comparative Contract Law between France and Italy at the University of Paris X – Nanterre, in the framework of the double master’s degree with the University of Bologna. Moreover, he regularly lectures in training programmes for SMEs in the field of external growth. In the past, he has been adjunct Professor at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in a project on international mergers and acquisitions for in-house lawyers.
For several years now, Gaspare has been dealing with the opportunities offered by new technologies (including, blockchain and smart contracts) and related legal aspects. In this field, he is the author of two recent articles on blockchain and M&A and a regular speaker at conferences and round tables on new technologies in France and Italy. His working languages are English, French and Italian.
Gaspare Dori has a passion for performing arts and playwriting. He is the author of several theater plays which have been premiered and performed both in France and abroad (including in India). Thanks also to his Italo-French background, Gaspare is particularly active in spreading the Italian culture and art in France and the French culture and art in Italy. To this end, he has founded the French-Italian Group.
Enrico Boverino is VP PreSales at VMware for EMEA. In this role, he has the responsibility to lead and develop a high-performance team of Solution Architects in Europe, creating a diverse, inclusive and innovative culture, continuing to evolve presales methodologies and architecture solutioning to maximise our customer successes. He helps companies across the globe to accelerate IT and business transformation and deepen the understanding of how the VMware solutions can deliver business results.
With continuous involvement at Executive level with customers, advising and supporting their efforts in Digital Transformation initiatives and Global IT Operation optimization, he developed knowledge and experience in several industry verticals, especially in Financial Services.
Enrico joined VMware in 2012 as Sr Business Solution Strategist for South EMEA, with the responsibility to define customers’ IT strategy to generate business value through pervasive enterprise adoption of Innovative programs.
Prior to VMware, Enrico was Executive Strategist & Presales Director at CA Technologies, managing an extended Presales team for Italy to support customer, outsourcers and service providers to adopt technologies for the business innovation.
Enrico is graduated in Electronic Engineering at Università di Pavia and has been ITIL-certified professional and previously ITAC-certified enterprise IT architect.
He recently completed the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Certificate at Stanford. He recently completed the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Certificate at Stanford University and Psychology of Leadership at Cornell University.
Enrico lives in Rome, he is passionate about food, football, and tennis that he’s practicing at agonistic level.
Valerio Mancini is Professor and Director of the Research Center of the Rome Business School; he has been a visiting lecturer in Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Cyprus, Syria, France, Poland and the United States. He is a lecturer at the Armando Curcio Institute in Rome.
He has worked in Italy and abroad with various international (UNODC, UNICRI, MAOC-N and OECD) and national organizations (MISAP, MASTERY and Youth Committee of the Italian National Commission of UNESCO). He has published several articles, reports and academic research; he was a foreign journalist for the Colombian newspaper “El Espectador” and, since 2010, has been a correspondent for Italy for the radio program “UN Analísis”. Author of “Football & Geopolitics” (New World, 2021).
Catherine Edoardova Costaggiu is Programming Director and Vice-President at Professional Women’s Association of Rome; Senior Manager at CastaldiPartners
Catherine is the Programming Director and Vice-President of Professional Women’s Association of Rome. She joined the association in September 2019.
Catherine strongly believes in giving back, the power of network, the need of linking women’s minds across cultures and the urgent need to break the glass ceiling and is thus committed to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Professionally, Catherine is an international lawyer with significant post-qualification experience. Since January 2022, she is senior manager at the international law firm CastaldiPartners, where she focuses on international arbitration and litigation as well as on ESG and sustainability-related matters. Prior to joining CastaldiPartners, Catherine worked in Rome and Milan in the litigation and arbitration department of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.
Catherine holds a Ph.D. in International Law & Economics from Bocconi University (Milan, 2020) and was a research fellow at the University of Brescia (2021-2022). Moreover, she is a University of Turin graduate (J.D. with honors, class of 2009), a Columbia Law School graduate (New York, LL.M. class of 2015), a Fulbright scholar (2014-2015), a McGill University alumnus (Montreal, 2008), and a former Universidad de Buenos Aires visiting research scholar (Argentina, 2018/2019).
Catherine is half Italian, half Bulgarian, has lived and studied in different countries (including Argentina, Canada, the USA, Bulgaria and Algeria), and speaks fluently Italian, Bulgarian, English, Spanish and French.
Antonio Ragusa is Dean of the Rome Business School. Antonio Ragusa is an Italian entrepreneur, professor, and author, founder of the Rome Business School. Graduated cum laude in law and qualified as a lawyer, he has a Master of Business Administration from London’s Imperial College Business School, further specializing in marketing and communications at the London School of Economics.
He has been teaching managerial disciplines at many Universities and Research Centres, such as the Roma Tre University, Luiss Guido Carli, and Salamanca University. Before starting his entrepreneurial career he gained considerable experience as a manager in large companies such as Enel and Trenitalia.
He is the author of numerous publications on subjects relating to organizational communication, marketing, and human resources management. Among them: Antonio Ragusa is the winner of international awards for his educational and entrepreneurial activities. Among the various recognitions, he has been appointed Academician by AEREC (European Academy for Economic and Cultural Relations) and has received the New York Award 2018 and the Emilio Castelar Award 2019 for his commitment to education on an international level.
