Alessandro Cagli is not only the director of European Affairs for Ferrero in Brussels, but was also one of the first graduates in Political Science in LUISS’s history.
"I started at LUISS when the university was first established, during the years when Confindustria had taken over Pro Deo. It was a period when the university was seeking a new identity: a phase of creative chaos that was really stimulating, with professors from various universities who came and went. At the same time, there were a number of great figures such as Paolo Savona, former minister and professor of Economic and Financial Policy, who stayed at LUISS and helped build its reputation. The confirmation of this is my degree from 1979, which has the ‘historic’ signature of the then-provost Rosario Romeo and the administrative director Giovanni Nocco."
Before becoming part of the well-known Italian group and serving on the board of directors of the Association of LUISS graduates in Brussels, Cagli began his career at the Banca Commerciale Italiana. "At the time it was common for companies to look for graduates with high grades, rather than the opposite. I had just finished university and I had not yet decided what to do: with a degree in Political Science you could do a lot of different things. I was given this opportunity and decided to run with it."
In the meantime, he decided to start a career in the public sector, taking part in a competition for a career in the ministries. "Whoever was admitted took a training course with final exams. I was ranked highly enough and chose the Ministry of Industry, where I began working in 1982, dealing with European policies for small and medium-sized businesses." This position led him to a life of commuting, continuously going back and forth between Rome and Brussels, until he got the opportunity to become part of the Permanent Representation of Italy to the European Union. "The position involved preparing for European Councils of Ministers of Industry, or rather, managing and supporting those colleagues who came from Rome, going to meetings with them and working with them on files for the Ministers."
In eight years (from 1995 to 2003), Cagli found himself managing, in his specific area of expertise, two Italian presidencies of the European Union: "managing a Presidency entails directing the meetings of working groups, guiding discussions, seeking compromises and preparing files for ambassadors and ministers of the various EU Councils." At the end of his mandate, when he was ready to come back to Rome and coordinate EU policies for industries and consumers from there, he got a call from the Ferrero Group to head their Office for European Affairs in Brussels. "The challenge was to leave a career as a public official in order to begin one as a private manager. I had to really think about it, but in the end I decided to accept."
For the past eleven years Cagli has dealt with EU problems for the well-known confectionary company, working with a number of industry associations in order to find common solutions on issues that range from the environment to food labels, and including regulation of advertising. "In Italy,” he continues, “there is little exchange between people who work in the public sector and the private sector. To have, on the other hand, people who know how to go from one sector to the other would help these two worlds to talk to each other and understand each other better." His advice for current and future LUISS students is that of not underestimating this passage: "Don’t think that careers need to be firm and stable, and always in the same field. Don’t put these limits on yourself automatically, but instead always look for different opportunities in different sectors."