RICCARDA ZEZZA - STEP INTO YOUR POWER: FEMALE LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD

Ashoka Switzerland and WISF are joining hands to celebrate women who decided to take action for a better world and encourage others to step into their power. Join the first webinar with our new partner where Riccarda Zezza, Ashoka Fellow, will speak about how each one of us can contribute to fixing the system.

Riccarda believes that work-life balance should radically be redefined, so parents can stop seeing their time off work spent with their children in conflict with their careers. To reach this objective, she works with employers, particularly in the corporate world helping them to stop seeing maternity leave and parental care as a burden, but as a time for developing key skills that are useful for personal as well as professional development. Riccarda refers to this concept as MaaM, Maternity as a Master(s).

Riccarda was born in Naples and raised in Rome. She studied in Siena and began her career in Milan, working for different corporations as a researcher, marketing, and communication expert (Pirelli, Microsoft, Nokia, and Banca Prossima). She has spent two years in Finland when she was given the responsibility for CSR for the whole EMEA region for Nokia. In 2012, upon returning from her second maternity leave in three years, she found out that she had been demoted and moved to a new department. She felt she was forced into resigning and she decided she was going to address the issue of maternity leave as an entrepreneur. She has been working full-time on this mission ever since.