The people behind the Forum

Born in Rome in 1965, Vincenzo Maria Naschi is President and co-founder of the Human Economic Forum (HEF), an international platform for dialogue bringing together representatives of institutions, academia, business and civil society to promote new models of development centred on people and social sustainability.

With a degree in Engineering and an MBA from SDA Bocconi, he held leadership positions in national and multinational companies before turning to entrepreneurship and the preservation of historical and cultural heritage. In Umbria, he led the restoration and regeneration of an ancient medieval village, transforming it into a place for hospitality, culture and social innovation.

For years, he has pursued research and dialogue on economic change, technological transformation and the quality of decision-making, with particular attention to the effects of artificial intelligence on institutions, work and community cohesion.

As an originator and co-founder of the Human Economic Forum, he serves as its Vice-President. He developed the concepts of Capitalismo del Senso and the Systemic Social Dividend (DSS), a proposal for a new right to transition in the age of artificial intelligence. His research focuses on the relationship between technological innovation, economic power, systemic responsibility, the dignity of work and new European social rights. He is the author of The Systemic Social Dividend and The Price of Power.

Through Sapiente Education, Dr Massimiliano Patacchiola connects teenagers and young adults with academics from leading universities for personalised learning and research mentorship, helping students build expertise, independent thinking and research skills.

His academic career includes research in the University of Cambridge’s Machine Learning Group in collaboration with Microsoft Research, a postdoctoral position at the University of Edinburgh and a PhD from the University of Plymouth. His work spans machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence, with more than 30 scientific publications, including papers selected for spotlight presentations at leading conferences. He has also gained industry experience at Snapchat, Huawei’s Noah’s Ark Lab and Tools for Humanity, the company behind the World project.

As Vice-President of the Human Economic Forum, he contributes to dialogue among researchers, business leaders, policymakers and religious representatives on technology and society. He also serves on Randstad’s “AI & Humanities” advisory board, with a commitment to preparing the next generation to contribute thoughtfully to a world shaped by technology.

As Vice-President of the Human Economic Forum, Francesca Tempesta is responsible for educational programmes and the coordination of strategic projects. Her contribution brings together law, institutions, social sustainability and innovation across the Forum’s different fields of action.

Within HEF, she coordinated the working group that developed a proposal for a European Regulation on Social Taxonomy and contributed to the proposal for the establishment of an Italian Ministerial Commission on Social Sustainability. She also curated two special issues of Corporate Governance, devoted respectively to social sustainability and data ethics.

The core of her work within the Forum focuses on the quality of decision-making in complex systems and on how decisions can remain understandable, accountable and grounded in human values over time. In this way, she contributes to HEF’s reflection on how technological innovation, institutions and economic development can be governed without losing sight of human dignity, responsibility and the common good.

Evgeny Afineevsky directed the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, which has galvanised people around the world to demonstrate against oppressive dictatorships. The film premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.

His next film, the Emmy-nominated Cries from Syria, opened hearts and minds to the experiences of people trapped in civil war after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. For Francesco, he earned the trust of Pope Francis and accompanied him on a journey around the world to overcome division through love and kindness.

His Emmy-nominated film Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, receiving international festival awards and Emmy nominations. His latest award-winning film, Ash and Crayons, has been screened for cultural and governmental institutions across Europe, the UK and the US, including the Vatican, the UK Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the Council of Europe and the US Congress. The film received the Cinema for Peace Award in Berlin, presented to Afineevsky by Hillary Clinton.

Angelo Cangelosi is Professor of Machine Learning and Robotics at the University of Manchester (UK) and co-director and founder of the Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI. He holds a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant and was previously a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute in London. His research interests include cognitive and developmental robotics, neural networks, language grounding, human–robot interaction and trust, and robot companions for health and social care.

He has secured over £38 million in research grants as coordinator or principal investigator, including the ERC Advanced eTALK, the UKRI TAS Trust Node and CRADLE Prosperity, the US AFRL project THRIVE++, and numerous Horizon and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions grants. He has produced more than 400 scientific publications.

He is Editor-in-Chief of Interaction Studies and IET Cognitive Computation and Systems, and in 2015 was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Development. He has chaired numerous international conferences, including ICANN 2022 in Bristol and ICDL 2021 in Beijing.

His book Developmental Robotics: From Babies to Robots (MIT Press) was published in January 2015 and translated into Chinese and Japanese. His latest book, Cognitive Robotics (MIT Press), co-edited with Minoru Asada, was published in 2022.

A technology enthusiast since the age of eight, Lorenzo Cappannari pursued classical studies before graduating with honours in business administration and beginning an international career that included extensive experience at Luxottica. After trying Google Glass, he recognised that the future of eyewear lay in technology. In 2015, he founded AnotheReality, a company specialising in the development of simulations and AI automation, where he serves as CEO. He is also a TEDx speaker, the author of Futuri Possibili, published by Giunti, and a collaborator with SDA Bocconi and Istituto Marangoni.

Laura Cappello, founder of Studio Legale Cappello, is a lawyer admitted to practise before Italy’s Supreme Court, a Technology Governance Advisor and a Legal Engineer. She has more than twenty-five years of experience advising businesses, Italian and international corporate groups, and public bodies on civil, commercial, corporate and administrative law. She has extensive experience in contract law, public procurement and complex litigation. Alongside her legal practice, she has spent many years advising on emerging technologies and the governance of innovation. She teaches the law of new technologies and has authored publications on artificial intelligence, blockchain and legal engineering.

A retired general of Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, Marco Defila is currently Secretary General of Confindustria Federalimentare. He previously served as an executive for International Affairs and Ecofin at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and as a liaison officer at the Ministry of the Interior. He has advised bicameral parliamentary committees and served as an adviser to the Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee during the 15th and 16th legislatures. Alongside his role at Confindustria, he advises leading Italian and international companies on institutional relations.

Cinzia Di Dio is Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where she teaches, coordinates research, and provides training on typical and atypical development across the lifespan. She holds a degree in Psychological Sciences from the University of Hertfordshire, an MSc in Research Methods, completed in collaboration with the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Parma. Her research focuses on decision-making, empathy, trust, and social cognition, with a specific focus on embodiment and Theory of Mind, using psychophysiological methods in the context of human-human and human-artificial agent interaction. She serves on national and international scientific boards, supervises doctoral research in Human Person and Education Sciences and in the Italian National Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence, and has authored numerous publications in national and international journals.

Antonio Fanelli is Director of the Administration Area at Banca UBAE S.p.A., where he coordinates administration, planning, management control and strategic planning. A chartered accountant and statutory auditor, he has worked in banking and finance for more than thirty years, holding positions of increasing responsibility in internal controls, compliance, risk management and credit management.

He contributed to the work of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Banking and Financial System during the 17th legislature and has a particular interest in sustainability, technological innovation and the use of artificial intelligence in decision-making and organisational processes. He currently participates in Banca UBAE S.p.A.’s management committees for credit and market risk.

Riccardo Fraccaro is CEO and President of Carbon Planet, an environmental services company active in the voluntary carbon credit market. He founded the company in 2023 to help address global warming through a technology platform supporting businesses in offsetting their CO2 emissions.

A law graduate of the University of Trento, he began his career at an energy service company (E.S.Co.), developing contractual models for energy efficiency projects.

A member of the Chamber of Deputies during the 17th and 18th legislatures (2013–2022), he served as a Secretary of its Bureau and as a Quaestor. From 2018 to 2019, he was Minister for Relations with Parliament and Direct Democracy, with responsibility for institutional reforms. From 2019 to 2021, he served as Undersecretary of State to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, with responsibility for the Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning (CIPE) and aerospace.

Alex Grech is the founding Executive Director of the 3CL Foundation, a public LearnTech foundation operating from Malta to advance critical AI and digital literacies, human agency through connected learning, and digital sovereignty. An Associate Professor at the University of Malta with a doctorate in internet communications, his work examines how people acquire the competences to remain agents rather than subjects as AI reshapes the world of work and education. He advises on technology in education and contributes to European frameworks that bear directly on the labour market, including AI and digital competence standards and digital identity wallets that shape how skills are recognised and how workers move across borders. His ongoing research and activist activities reach from Europe to Canada and small states in the Commonwealth. Running through it is one preoccupation: the distance between what these technologies promise and what they deliver for those whose work depends on the difference.

Maria Elena Iafolla is a lawyer and the owner of her eponymous law firm, with offices in Milan, Turin and Genoa. She practises in the areas of new technology law, personal data protection, information security and regulatory compliance applied to artificial intelligence.

In academia and research, she is a lecturer in Business Law and Academic Director of the Department of Innovation and Sustainability at the European School of Economics. She is a member of the Board of Arbitrators of Assintel, Italy’s national association of ICT companies, and serves on the City of Turin’s board for the ethical use of emerging technologies in urban innovation. She previously served as President of the Digital Forensics Alumni association. An ISO/IEC 27001 Lead Auditor, author of scientific publications and speaker at professional conferences, she focuses on the legal, ethical and regulatory aspects of business innovation.

A former European civil servant who spent 20 years working within European patent organisations, Mariam Lambert devoted herself fully to humanitarian work following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She has since led more than 70 missions to Ukraine, supporting evacuations, documenting evidence and helping families search for abducted loved ones.

She led the Emile Foundation’s FOUND. NOT HOME. investigation, combining field research, eyewitness testimony and family interviews to trace children and adults with disabilities taken from occupied Kherson Oblast and support efforts to reunite them with their families.

Mariam has presented this work in more than 30 countries, including at the United Nations, the European Parliament and the G20 Social Summit. She also presented the investigation’s findings directly to members of the US Senate and House of Representatives on Capitol Hill. In 2026, she became the first TEDx speaker to devote an entire talk to Ukraine’s abducted children and led a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Her honours include Ukraine’s Order of Merit, awarded by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; an award from the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament; the Leader of Humanity Award; the Order of St Panteleimon; the Voice of Peace Award; and the International Human Rights Award.

Vivaldo Moscatelli has worked on learning technologies and digital transformation since the late 1980s. He currently works at the Bank of Italy’s Training School, having also worked in the European Central Bank’s Talent Division.

He coordinates Fondazione ENIA’s “AI Culture and Organisational Transformation” Study and Research Commission and is a European Commission Ambassador for the European Digital Skills Certificate (EDSC) project. He founded FIRST CISL-BI’s Megatrends Observatory and created initiatives for knowledge sharing and development: OpenAIF for the dissemination of artificial intelligence, CompleXAILAB on the relationship between complexity and generative AI, OpenDEI on human-centred issues, now OpenDEI Editoria Sociale, and OpenFutures for futures studies. He is an adviser to Ecosistema Formazione Italia (EFI).

He teaches Lean Healthcare at university level and has published Formare con l’IA generativa (Apogeo) and Comunicare sostenAbile (OpenDEI).

Silvia Nicolò graduated in Medicine and Surgery from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome in 2012. In 2016, she completed the General Practice training course and subsequently completed a second-level university master’s programme in aesthetic and regenerative medicine. She currently practises as a general practitioner and aesthetic medicine physician in Nettuno.

Antonella Quindici is a chartered accountant, statutory auditor and sustainability auditor. She is registered with the Italian Order of Journalists as a publicist journalist and has authored numerous articles on International Accounting Standards and extraordinary corporate transactions for specialist publications.

She graduated with honours in Economics and Business and has served for several years as a subject-matter expert for university courses in International Accounting and Corporate Communications and Extraordinary Transactions. She is a member of the national Financial Statements and Auditing, Sustainability and Business Reporting, and Crisis and Insolvency Law commissions of UNGDCEC, the National Union of Young Chartered Accountants and Accounting Experts.

She completed a master’s programme in Administration, Finance and Control and has worked in administration for a leading industrial group for approximately 25 years. She specialises in financial reporting and in managing extraordinary transactions, including mergers, demergers and transfers of business units.

She is also a member of ENIA, the National Body for Artificial Intelligence, and of the academic association SIDREA, the Italian Society of Accounting and Business Administration Academics.

Stefano Tomasini is a public-sector executive whose career spans major public administrations and publicly owned companies, focusing on governance, digital transformation, organisation and the management of complex programmes. He has served as Director of Human Resources at the State General Accounting Department and led information systems for the finance administration and INAIL, helping to modernise processes and develop organisational models focused on efficiency, service quality and the effective use of public information assets.

He has worked on complex projects involving technological innovation, digitalisation, procurement and organisational redesign. He is Chairman of Consip S.p.A. and Chief Operating Officer of 3-i S.p.A. He combines strategic vision, implementation skills and a deep understanding of public administration, with sustained attention to innovation as a means of transformation and of improving services for citizens and businesses.

Andrea Vivoli is Director General of the Central Bank of the Republic of San Marino, where he chairs the Supervisory Coordination Committee. An economist, he has extensive experience in banking and financial regulation and supervision, having held positions at the Bank of Italy and the Central Bank of San Marino. His professional work focuses on prudential supervision, risk management, financial innovation and the evolution of the European regulatory framework.

In recent years, he has developed a particular interest in the applications of artificial intelligence in the financial sector, especially supervisory technology (SupTech), governance and risk. He is a member of the Scientific Council of CSAIA, the Centre for Advanced Studies on Artificial Intelligence, and regularly participates in scientific, educational and institutional initiatives nationally and internationally.