Valentina Gelsomini

WHAT I DO: Teaching is the most difficult thing I've ever done. I never planned it and never even imagined it. In reality I'm a ‘Monod-style trainer’, as a friend of mine called me, because I started by ‘chance and necessity’. Now my space is that of training, an ‘infinite’ space, because you can learn anywhere, anytime.
WHAT I DREAM OF: space. I've never stopped dreaming about it, but today I see it everywhere, infinite, as a challenge to overcome all kinds of limits and constantly reinvent myself.

MY WORD: #sharing #solutions #challenges #transformation #dialogue
 

With a degree in Aerospace Engineering I had other plans, I imagined myself immersed in challenging research programmes or travelling to unexplored worlds. Moreover, I had worked hard to earn my degree and it had been very satisfying: there were 300 of us and 20 of us graduated, despite the obstructionism of the male professors, who were still convinced that certain subjects (STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) were not ‘women's stuff’. Yes, these things still happen, even if the first Italian female aerospace engineer, Amalia Ercoli Finzi, is now 81 years old. In military terms, it would seem that the scientist Amalia has only won a battle, but not the war. The only thing I have in common with her is that, as a child, I too was attracted to aeroplanes. My brother used to leave aeronautical magazines lying around the house and I, little by little, began to dream of space.