Simona Scarpaleggia is an innovative, pragmatic and constructive international business leader with a talent for unleashing the potential of both teams and individuals. She is Board Director, Former CEO, Mentor, Public speaker and Author.
Simona Scarpaleggia ist a Strategic Advisor and serves as Board Member for different companies including EDGE Strategy AG that measures, accelerates and certifies organizations in Gender & Intersectional Equity. Before, she has acted as Manager of the Global Initiative for the future of our work at IKEA and as CEO for IKEA Switzerland.
She is a passionate campaigner for all issues surrounding women’s empowerment. In 2009, she co-founded “Valore D” in Italy and “Advance Women” in Switzerland in 2013. Both organizations have a mission to boost gender diversity and to increase the share of mixed-gender management teams for the benefit of the customers, companies, economies and societies. She is author of the book “The Other Half” which has been published in July 2019.
From 2016 to 2018 she co-chaired the UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment in the context of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. She serves in several boards both of listed and non-listed companies and in the Advisory Boards of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Zurich, the Research Institute for International Management at the University of St. Gallen (FIM-HSG), and of ZHdK.
Simona Scarpaleggia holds a degree in political science and an MBA from SDA Bocconi School of Management. She also holds a Doctorate Honoris causa from the International University in Geneva. In 2022 she received the Career Award of the Swiss Economic Forum. She is an Italian citizen, is married and has three children.
Speeches in italian and english.