A place for the person
behind the title.

Not at all. I love an aperitivo when it is done well — a real one, with time to sit down. I wanted a different kind of evening: a beautiful place, interesting people, where a CEO and a good laugh could sit at the same table. I had plenty of contacts. What I was missing was an evening worth going to. So I began to build it.

While I was starting Minerva, my first company, a sensory branding agency, I decided to use LinkedIn to tell my story. I wrote articles, my profile grew, and I began writing to women I admired. My message was simple: would you like to join me for a virtual aperitivo? That is how it started: a few of us on a video call with a glass in our hands. Then we moved to real tables and the dinners became a habit. Back then I called them Donne Manager, Italian for women managers — a name that was very much of its time, let us say.

Choosing this kind of career changes your life, and it is not always easy to talk about it. Your family and the friends you grew up with love you, but they do not always understand why you keep choosing the harder road, or what it costs to carry that much pressure every day. Nobody comes here to complain. They come to sit with people who understand without long explanations, tell their own story and put the weight down for a couple of hours. Each woman finds her own reason to stay. Underneath, it is about sharing.

Something changed the moment everyone sat down. Work broke the ice. Then we talked about choices, family, ambition and doubts — the things that rarely come up in a formal introduction. I saw women laugh, get emotional and tell stories they had kept quiet for years. I call them tightrope walkers: women who are very good at their jobs and keep everything else in balance too. For one evening, they can put the pole down.

I asked restaurants and hotels I worked with to host us. They welcomed a table full of interesting guests. I met women I admired. And the guests had an evening they were not expecting. Everyone gave something and everyone got something back. That exchange still keeps TLWC going.

In May 2025, on a trip to New York. Far from the office, with time to think, everything became clear: the project needed a structure, a name and a real decision. Minerva already had its own model, clients and way of working; this was asking for something else. So I gave it a name, asked a few people to help me carry it, and let it grow.

A lot of them. Women who came to the first Donne Manager dinners are still here. They have watched a few tables turn into an international Circle, and they have grown with us. They did not just watch: their trust, ideas and presence helped build it. Growing alongside women who knew this project before it had a name, and chose to stay, means a lot to me.

An international Circle for people with big responsibilities, created so they can meet one another with real curiosity. Work is part of their lives; here there is room for the rest of life too.

A very good dinner, full of people you are not ready to leave.

Il Salotto is our home in Milan: a place of our own, where many of our meetings happen. Once a month, from 8:30 to 10, women gather for breakfast. The coffee goes round, people start talking straight away, and by ten there are already new plans, ideas and partnerships. The energy is hard to explain. At that hour it should be fine to say very little. Here the opposite happens.

Once a month we also host a mixed aperitivo elsewhere in the city. We have tried much bigger evenings too. They were beautiful, but they taught me to prefer a group where people have time to meet, go back to an unfinished conversation and introduce someone properly. That is the kind of evening I want to create.

The gatherings become smaller: seven or eight people. With our partners we organise dinners, drinks, masterclasses and retreats. The point is to do something together. Around a table, at a tasting or on a trip, people have time to watch, listen and find what they share. Some of it turns into projects, some into friendships. We like both.

Work, passions, travel, family and, every now and then, men. The men are usually at the table anyway, so they can answer for themselves. Sometimes we talk about work. The table decides what comes next. The conversation goes wherever it matters that day. That is what keeps it alive.

With a name. That is it. No job title, no company. Then the game starts: everybody tries to guess what the others do. Questions, clues and some very creative theories. Somebody gets promoted to CEO by mistake; somebody else gets demoted. By the time the truth comes out, you already like the person in front of you. It is the fastest way I know to break the ice.

Because it happened to me. Before I opened Minerva at twenty-six, I worked as a shop assistant and did other jobs. In one of my first interviews with a big luxury brand, I was asked why they should choose someone like me, newly arrived from Catania. What stayed with me was being judged before I had said a word. Here we give everyone those first minutes back.

Every event has its own composition. Some are mixed, some are for a specific group, and some are for women in executive roles — one format among many. Men are members too: they take part, host and bring their own people. Different perspectives make a Circle stronger. Every place is confirmed after approval, and each activity page explains who it is for and how it works. Member profiles and AI help us suggest events and see who might connect. The final decision stays with us.

Something you can experience: a dinner, a masterclass, a product, a story, a place or a skill. Guests meet the brand through its people. Many partner managers are members themselves: they join in, listen and build with us. The brand gets seen and felt, then remembered for how it made people feel.

Founders, executives, managers and entrepreneurs from different countries and industries. Luxury, retail, lifestyle, hospitality and food and drink are particularly well represented. They are people who make decisions all day and have very few free evenings. That is exactly why every meeting has to be worth their time.

A title tells us something about a person’s path. We also look at how present they are, how curious and how well they listen. We ask everyone who applies what they could bring to the Circle. The most interesting answers are about skills, ideas, time or a door they could open for someone else.

The Builders’ board reviews applications each month and decides on admission, working alongside the TLWC team. The Builders also welcome new members and help care for the Circle. Each wears a pin with the rose from The Little Prince: what we take care of becomes our responsibility. That pin is not decoration. The rose stands for care; the rules give that care a direction. A small pin with a big job.

They work across four areas: Welcome & Member Development, Arts & Culture, Leisure and Magazine. They bring ideas, create activities and put different points of view into our decisions. Life inside the Circle goes well beyond work: exhibitions, shared interests, editorial projects and time spent together.

Joining is the start of a relationship. A living Circle has to listen and respond: activities change, the Builders listen, and anonymous feedback tells us what works and what does not. Members shape the Circle by showing up, taking part and respecting one another. And the Circle answers back.

I want the relationship with each person to be about ideas, experiences and exchange. If their company wants to become a partner, that is a different conversation, between two businesses. Keeping those relationships distinct makes both of them better. Members bring their presence and care; partners make the experiences possible.

Probably — but it has the good manners to stay in the background. Members apply for events in the app, and each place is confirmed. They can see who they met and when, send a message, add private notes and receive suggestions on whom to meet next. Partners manage activities through their own portal. The system connects applications, matching, confirmations, the record of each encounter and anonymous feedback. That helps us grow while keeping our attention on people.

I did. I have always been a hands-on tech nerd, and this was clearly the moment for it. Technology handles the complexity; the team keeps the judgement human. It gives us more time for people and helps a big Circle stay as warm as a small one. That is exactly what technology should be doing.

Growing fast is exciting, expensive and a very good teacher. We invested heavily to test the model, with international partners — luxury brands included — alongside us from the beginning. We built processes, corrected mistakes and tested the structure properly. It was hard work, and it helped us understand what the Circle needed in order to grow.

The people at the table are present, attentive and curious. Partners enter a setting where a brand can be understood through an experience. Their managers often take part as members: they listen, meet people and become part of the group before deciding what to build with us.

For me, luxury is being able to choose: where to be, whom to be with and how much attention to give a conversation. Beauty matters. Places, products, culture and service matter. Then each person turns all of it into a memory of their own. That is the luxury I want TLWC to create.

I owe a lot of this growth to the team. What I love most is their enthusiasm. We are learning how to make a young project better while it grows: trying ideas, testing tools and questioning the way we work. Different backgrounds help, and I would like the team to become as international as possible. Some weeks, breakfast, lunch and dinner are all TLWC. It is wonderful, and it takes stamina. We also have two small mascots: Elfo, my toy poodle, and Kelly, Lisa’s dachshund. While we work, they race around Il Salotto as though it were their playground. Energy, curiosity and a taste for trying things are some of the best parts of this team.

Very — but one step at a time. Our ambition is to build living local Circles, each with its own character, connected by the same manifesto, the same care and the same shared system. Each city should feel rooted where it is, and clearly part of TLWC.

Writing a cheque would use only a small part of what this Circle could do. Within TLWC are people who can bring skills, relationships, influence, funding and decision-making power. Together we could build something that matters. That is exactly why it has to be done properly: the project first, the announcement later, one step at a time.

Getting bigger and meaning less. The manifesto, the selection and the quality of the relationships have to remain intact. I look at the numbers, of course, but I pay more attention to what happens around the tables. That is where you see whether the Circle is still going in the right direction.

That they met someone they would never have known how to look for on their own. If the next morning you want to write to someone you met the night before, the Circle has done its job. For me, that is still the best way to measure it.