I graduated cum laude on a Master in Computer Engineering in Rome, with a thesis on the merits of moving the entire core tech stack of Telecom Italia – the largest Italian telco – to Open Source.
I went on to spend my whole career in open source, with over 20 years in across Italy, The Netherlands, The East and West Coast of the US, garnering experience in each of the major constituents of the ecosystem: individual contributors, contributing corporates and open source foundations.
I started on the community side, in an individual capacity as a contributor (Apache Maven), committer and release manager (Apache Chemistry, Spring Surf), and community builder (alfresco-sdk).
I had the luck of being paid for my open source work when I joined Alfresco (a UK headquarters open source content management system). Over 7 years, I covered several individual contributor and management roles across Engineering, Professional Services, Support, Sales Engineering and Product Management. During this period I also participated in open standardization processes, like CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) under OASIS.
In 2016, I became the initial Executive Director for the Symphony Software Foundation, a 501c6 open source foundation created by the largest global investment banks in the world to democratize secure communications technology in financial services. Founding Members included Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Deutsche Bank, S&P.
Less than two years later I led the Board to rebrand the Symphony Software Foundation into FINOS, the Fintech Open Source Foundation, with the broader mission of enabling individuals and companies to better collaborate on financial technology, seizing the major opportunity for open collaboration in a conservative and highly regulated industry.
In two years we grew to 40 Members with a diverse representation across financial institutions, technology, data and fintech vendors, and hosted over 30 open source (landscape.finos.org) and open standard projects (e.g. fdc3.finos.org), with major contributions amongst others by Goldman Sachs (legend.finos.org), JPMorgan (perspective.finos.org), Morgan Stanley (morphir.finos.org) and Deutsche Bank (waltz.finos.org).
In early 2020 right before the pandemic, I led FINOS to join the Linux Foundation umbrella to accelerate growth, ensure long term sustainability of our efforts and seeking to reduce fragmentation in the Foundation’s ecosystem.
Since then we almost doubled our Membership base, growing our global footprint with notable additions of Wellington Management, Google, Societe Generale, Natwest, Lloyds and AXA, continued to grow our project portfolio with a strong focus on better regulatory technology and collaborating directly with regulators (e.g. Common Domain Model – https://www.finos.org/common-domain-model), and grew the Open Source in Finance Forum, the sole event for open source in Financial Services, to over 800 people across NYC and London.
Besides the growth of the FINOS Community, perhaps the most notable achievement is that open source is nowadays much better understood in this industry, with financial institutions (and regulators) not only structuring themselves for open source (I personally witnessed 20+ OSPOs created in 2022), but engaging in contributions not only specific to their industry but also upstream (e.g. OpenSSF, Kubernetes, Pandas, etc.)
As of September 2022, I’ve taken on a dual role as General Manager of the newly launched Linux Foundation Europe, created to foster regional open collaborations in the European continent and grow them through the global platform of the Linux Foundation (e.g. openwallet.foundation) . While I’m still based in the Bay Area until relocating to Europe in a not so far future, I spend at least 20% of my time in Europe working closely with the EU and public sector, the Linux Foundation Europe Members (linuxfoundation.eu/en/members), individual contributors and engaging in collaborative initiatives with other open source foundation (e.g. Open Forum Europe, Eclipse, etc) on pressing community and policy matters (e.g. CRA, Fragmentation Report).
Outside of my day job(s), I am advisor for OpenBB (openbb.co), an open source investment platform.
On the personal front, I am a passionate Napoli (Italian football) fan and love playing football any chance I get. I love reggae/dancehall music and I enjoy cooking – unsurprisingly – Italian cuisine. I have extensive public speaking experience, both as keynote speaker and technical workshops, and I speak fluently Italian, English and Spanish, with a basic understanding of Dutch and French.
How the candidate will contribute to the board
I have the utmost respect for OSI as a fundamental institution at the very heart of the functioning of the global open source ecosystem.
Here’s a few areas which I assume would be beneficial for OSI:
– Introductions at executive, legal and technology level out of my extensive network in technology and financial services, across US and Europe
– Represent and catalyze attention, action and compliance of the hundreds of open source projects in the Linux Foundation
– Where applicable, co-promotion/co-organization of OSI initiatives through the platform of the Linux Foundation
– Support consensus building through my extensive board experiencing, lead / participating in Board committees as appropriate
– Represent OSI in public speaking engagements as well as meetings across private and public sector
– Produce blogs, podcasts, content for the OSI if desired
Ultimately, should I be elected I plan to contribute actively in the areas deemed most relevant by the Board of Directors and by the Executive Director, as I see myself at the service of the organization rather than the other way around.
Why the candidate should be elected
First off, it would be a dream and an incredible honor to serve in the OSI Board. I was born and bred in open source and I wouldn’t be here hadn’t I started contributing in the flourishing open source decade of the early 2000s.
This makes me an extremely motivated candidate, with the goal of making OSI ever more successful, as OSS evolves in the face of systemic sustainability challenges and existential challenges posed by AI.
As you decide your vote, I would ask you to consider I have:
– Been a contributor myself
– First-hand experience in all the constituents of the OSS ecosystem (contributor, commercial, foundation)
– Extensive Board leadership experience, having grown FINOS from the ground up through a pivot and a merger
– Unique experience of building a “vertical” foundation in one of highly regulated industry, a construct I expect to see ever more often as every industry undergoes digital transformation
– A global open source network, through my EU, UK and US tenures
– Developed, through FINOS, a clear vision for collaboration of public sector (lawmakers, regulators, academic), corporate and individual contributors
– Deep understanding of legal aspects of OSS, having build FINOS’ governance from the inception
Thank you for your consideration!