Biographies

EMILY YOUNG, ENVIRONMENTAL SCULPTOR

E.Y. was born in London in a family of writers, artists, politicians, naturalists and explorers. She started in art with painting, moving to stone sculpture in the 1980s. Between the late 1960s and the 70s she travelled extensively in Afghanistan, Pakisthan, India, Africa and The Middle East influenced by each country’s of the different artistic expressions.

Acclaimed as Britain’s most important living stone sculptor, she recently received the 2024 Venice Biennale ECC Award for Sculptor and Installation. Her works are included in important collections of major museums such as the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Committed to the environment, she prefers to use materials from disused quarries. In 2015, three of her monumental statues were placed on the seabed off the coast of Tuscany to protect the local marine ecosystem from trawling.

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LUCIE BRANCO, COMPAGNON, STONE-CUTTER

She is one of the first three women admitted to the Compagnons du Devoir du Tour de France, a French institution dating back to the Middle Ages and closed to women until 2004, known in France for the excellence of its craftsmen.

In 2007, L.B. was the first female Compagnon stone-cutter accepted by the Association, of which she later also became the first female manager when her back, compromised by years of overwork on the construction site due to sometimes sheer harassment, prevented her from practicing as a stonemason.

L.B. was involved in the restoration of the Rodez cathedral, among others. Today, she is nationwide responsible for the sustainable development process of Compagnons du Devoir. She practices as an freelance speaker to promote the diversity, inclusion and “working together”.   

She published the autobiographic book “ You don’t build cathedral with preconceived ideas”

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RICCARDA DE ECCHER, CLIMBER AND ARTIST

Riccarda de Eccher was born in South Tyrol, raised in Friuli and now lives in the United States.

She is one of the female mountaineers who in the 1970s paved the way for women climbers in high-altitude terrains. She began climbing at 17 and pursued it full-time from the age of 18 to 31. She climbed the most challenging peaks: from Dolomites to Mount Everest, from the Annapurna to the Andes; always  keeping the Dolomites close to her heart.

She began painting at the age of fifty, after a long period in which she built a family, moved to America and developed two professional careers.

She paints only mountains and only the Dolomites. She uses watercolours, a challenging technique where, as in mountaineering, there is no room for error.
Her works are regularly exhibited in Europe and the United States.

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ARMELLE CHIARI, FOUNDER

She has always taken a manual trade for granted. She started very young, in tailoring and then moved on to metalworking. At 22, with an internship in an art foundry, her professional dream began.

She joins the Compagnons du Devoir and became one of the rare women foundry workers. In her Tour de France as a compagnon, she experimented with different casting and art foundry techniques. She trained at the foundry of the Foundation de Coubertin where she completed her reception work to become a Compagnon du Devoir. A blazon of the foundry trade, a trade orphaned of blazon because foundry men are few; women even fewer. She worked at the the Maison de la Monnaie in Paris and is committed to popularising the foundry trade among young people, .

She is currently training in organic farming in Quebec, pursuing a parallel dream to her work in art foundry: to cultivate the land.

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ERIKO HORIKI, WASHI ARTIST

A former bank employee, Eriko Horiki launches herself into the manufacturing of the Japanese washi paper  in a completely impulsive way. When she was a simple accountant, she had the opportunity to visit a washi production village. She was struck by the dedication of the craftsmen that allowed the continuity of a thousand-year-old Japanese tradition.

Two years later when the washi production company was forced to closing, she launched her own company, and then embarked on a path to pursue technique to make washi and its design absolutely on her own.

But the historically family-based Echizen washi artisan community rejected her as an outsider.

It took three years of perseverance before the artisans spoke to her and another two years before they accepted to listen to her innovative ideas.

EH has been producing large-size washi for architectural space and interior design. Now, E.H. develops and produces innovative three-dimensional washi and large size washi over ten meters.

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DEBORA RIZZETTO, QUEEN BEE BREEDER

A goldsmith for fifteen years in the Valenza district, at the age of 34 she discovered the world of beekeeping by chance and radically changed her work and life to devote herself to bees.

She studies their training and their ecosystem to protect it.  Together with her husband, she runs a worldwide leader company in the breeding of genetically selected queen bees to resist climate change.

In 2018, she won the first Terre de Femmes prize from the Yves Roches Foundation (which supports women who are committed to the Planet on a daily basis) with the “sentinel bee and environmental thermometer” project, born from the idea of installing beehives in urban areas to monitor, through bees, air pollution levels and the presence of pollutants.

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ANNALISA BUFFO, NEUROSCIENTIST

A.B. is Deputy Director of NICO – Neuroscience Institute Cavalieri Ottolenghi and Associate Professor of Physiology at the University of Turin, Department of Neuroscience ‘Rita Levi Montalcini’.

She coordinates a research group in brain stem cell Pathophysiology, focusing on the reparative and regenerative properties of glial and neural stem cells.

Her research investigates whether and how new neurons generated from glial cells or obtained ‘in a test tube’ from neural stem cells can integrate into the circuits of a damaged mature brain, contributing to the reconstruction of lost circuits and the restoration of impaired functions.

This project, which aims to revolutionise stem cell-based therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, was recently awarded an ERC Synergy Grant.

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LIDA LOPES CARDOZO KINDERSLEY, ALPHABETICIAN

Dutch by birth, she studied at the Royal Academy in The Hague. Letter-cutter by profession. Hon. Doctor of Letters of Cambridge, and Hon. Fellow of Magdalene College.
A champion of free will, she broke away from conventions and rules in order to follow her professional passion. In 1975 at a conference in Warsaw, she met David Kindersley, letter-cutter, type designer and founder of the Kindersley Workshop. She was twenty-one, he forty years older. To her, it was love at first sight: for the craft and the man. She followed him to Cambridge, became his pupil, wife, mother of three children and partner. Their partnership led to many creative works including the gates of the British Library.

After David’s death in 1995, there was a widespread belief that without him the Workshop had no future and would close. Lida found the strength through some dark years to prove otherwise, to bring the Workshop to the pre-eminent position that it holds in the world today. Her works, be they small or monumentally large, are to be found across the world.

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PATRIZIA CARAVEO, ASTROPHYSICIST

Patrizia Caraveo is a research manager at INAF and winner of the ‘Enrico Fermi’ prize in 2021.

Her main field of interest is the behaviour of neutron stars and their role in high-energy astrophysics. She identified Geminga, a source recognised as the first pulsar without radio emission: a mummy star.

In 2009, she received the National President of the Republic Award for her studies on neutron stars. She has collaborated on numerous international space missions dedicated to astrophysics, missions of the Italian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and NASA. She is among the 100 experts in the STEM area of the project “100 women against stereotypes for Science.”

She is actively committed to the dissemination of science among women in order to inspire more and more girls to be won over by the fascination of science and contribute to the sustainable development of our Planet.

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MARIACRISTINA GRIBAUDI, ENTREPRENEUR

Entrepreneur, marathon runner, mother of six children. Mc.G. is an example of gender equality put into practice every day in private life as well as at work.

Turin by birth, Venetian by adoption, she began her career in the family business, Mareno Grandi Cucine, working in marketing. She then went on to work on her own, importing antique furniture from Northern Europe.

In 2002, together with her husband Massimo Bianchi – the seventh generation of an entrepreneurial family that has been producing keys and key cutting machines uninterruptedly since 1770 – she gave life to an industrial project with a factory based on the “family system”; a place for training as well as production, with a library and a key museum. For twenty years she and her husband managed Keyline alternating their administration roles every three years according to a model they had created.

Since 2015 she is the President of The Foundation of Civic Museums of Venice, which manages eleven permanent museum sites, including the Doge’s Palace.

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ELISABETTA AJANÌ, SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER

Her father wanted her to be a musician and follow in his footsteps; her mother pushed her to follow her inclination for artistic work. She is a stage and costume designer, stylist, ceramist, portrait painter and much more.

She holds the Chair of stage design, cinematography and digital technologies at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin.

She works in the field of film design, sustainable exhibition stage design. She collaborates with film production companies and film directors such as Dario Argento, Christian Duguay, Peter Greenaway and Carlo Lizzani. She also works alongside young emerging filmmakers.

She loves to involve the Academy students in a work of knowledge transmission in which the graduates continue to collaborate with her and, in turn, carry out the transmission of their knowledge to younger students. In 2024 she received the Golden Film Nomination for Best Stage Design.

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CHLOÈ MEYZIE, ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR

Born into a family whose members have been amateur wind instrument musicians for generations, she is the first professional musician in the family with a diploma in saxophone and a degree in musicology from the Sorbonne University of Paris and Tours. However, her doctorate in musicology opened a profound crisis in her professional choices and C.M. changed direction; she completed her conducting studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris-Tours and, at a very young age, became a conductor.

She is considered a natural leader and a passionate musician for her energy and inspired, brilliant vision in conducting. 

Regularly invited to conduct important national orchestras in France, Europe and the USA, and the recipient of major awards, C.M. is also involved in large-scale projects including Labopéra Perigord-Dordogne, an opera company that is part of the French national network La Fabrique Opèra, in which she conducted Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s La Traviata and Bernstein’s West Side Story.  

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ELISABETTA MIJNO, ARCHER AND HAND SURGEON

Paraplegic since the age of five, Elisabetta Mijno is a concrete example of diversity and inclusion: in sport and in her profession as a surgeon. Two parallel paths pursued up to the highest levels.

A specialist in the recurve bow, at 38, E.M. has a list of honours that places her among the world’s great athletes: five medals in the Paralympic Games, including team gold and individual bronze in Paris 2024; seven medals at the World Championships, eleven medals at the European Championships. Two Italian overall titles; two world records. She competes in the able-bodied national team and is one of the rare Paralympic athletes to have been called up for the non-Paralympic national team.

A graduate in medicine and surgery, E.M. specialises in orthopaedics and traumatology and is part of the hand surgery team at the Orthopaedic Trauma Centre in Turin.

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HELEN NONINI, BRAND ADVISOR

Born in Egypt, Milanese by adoption, cosmopolitan.

Today brand advisor and strategic consultant, H.N. began her career in finance, continuing in fundraising, non-profit and the luxury universe, as top manager of the world’s most important Luxury Conciergerie agency. Author of the book Professione Problem Solver (Ed. Il Sole24Ore), she was also Brand Ambassador for Pomellato.

Founder & CEO of Schwa, a strategic consulting firm, she is an entrepreneur committed to raising awareness of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion issues. For ten years, she has worn a turban every day: finding in it not only her own style archetype, but also elevating this accessory beyond the cliché of cancer illness, thus helping women undergoing treatment not to feel ‘labelled’.

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SÉVERINA LARTIGUE, CREATOR OF SILK FLOWERS

She does a rare artcraft that she dreamt of before she even discovered its existence. She has picked up the baton of Jacques Delamare, the great creator of floral parures at Maison Fromentin founded in 1902, whose heir she has become. S.L. works for haute couture; she is the only one in France to master this savoir faire of excellence by hand in all its stages.

 She possesses over 6000 antique cutting and gauffrage tools, from 1770 to 1930, which she uses daily in her workshop in Normandy.

She is a maître d’art, a title awarded by the French Culture Ministry recognising the excellence and the transmission of artistic crafts as well as the path and commitment of craftsmen preserving rare savoir faire.

She was awarded with many titles: Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant ; Talent de la rareté by the Centre du Luxe et de la Création; she among the of holders of rare savoir-faire inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.