Barbara Cominelli

Barbara has more than 25 years of managerial experience in multiple roles – CEO, CDO, CMO, COO, leading large teams with more than 3000 people in Italy and abroad in various industries – Technology, Energy, Industrial, Strategic Consulting and more recently Real Estate. She also has 10 years of experience as NED in listed Companies.
Passionate about digital, innovation, inclusion and sustainability and how they drive business and societal impact, she has a strong track record in executing successful digital and business transformation programs, both in tech and traditional sectors.
Currently she is the CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle in Italy, a Fortune 500 and the second largest real estate services firm in the world. She joined JLL in December 2020, with the objective of accelerating the growth of the company in Italy and supporting the re-imagination of the entire industry, enabling the green and digital revolution, embracing a new way of working, living and shaping the life of our cities.
She is also a Strategic Advisor to ILIAD, she is a member of the Executive Committee of AICEO (the Italian CEOs association) and ULI, a member of the Advisory Board in Federmanager and in IlSole24Ore. She is also the Vice President in Confindustria Assoimmobiliare. Previously she held the role of Deputy CEO, Marketing and Operations Director of Microsoft Italy. During that period she orchestrated the ambitious growth plan, across the various business lines – modern work, cloud, AI and business applications – and the 2Bill investment plan in order to create an Italian Data Center Region and the social impact program, “Ambizione Italia” aimed at bridging the digital divide, providing training on digital skills to 1.5 M Italians.
From 2010 to 2018 she served as a Member of the Global Senior Leadership team of Vodafone Group and the Director of Digital, Commercial Operations and Wholesale for Vodafone Italy, reporting to the Italian CEO. She led a team of 3000 people on a journey to transform the company with digital innovation, excellence in customer experience, agility and intrapreneurship, allowing the company to digitalize 90% of the client interactions, boosting digital sales and achieving leadership in NPS.
Before that she held senior roles in an energy multinational company, a strategy consulting firm and a Venture Capital firm; she started her career as Assistant Professor at Bocconi University.
Additionally she has been for 4 years a Director and Member of the Strategy and Sustainability Committee in Autogrill (now Avolta), the world’s leading provider of services for travelers, and served for 6 years as NED and Member of the Risk and Nomination Committee for ERG Spa.
She has broad international experience having studied and worked in Italy, Spain, UK, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and the USA.
Education: Graduated Summa Cum Laude in Business Administration; CEMS Master in International Business at Bocconi University and ESADE; exchange program at Rotterdam School of Management; Executive education at Stanford University, Cambridge and SDA Bocconi.
She has been included twice in the “Top 50 most inspirational women in technology in Europe”, awarded among the Top Italian CEOs by Forbes in 2021 and included in the list of Fortune Businessperson of the year 2020 in Italy; with (thanks to) her teams she won several awards for Digital and Customer Experience excellence in Italy and internationally.
She is a tireless ambassador of D&I inside organizations she is involved in and in the wider society. She is active in several no profit initiatives to promote D&I, with a focus on youth and young women empowerment. She is the co-founder of GirlsRestart, a community where women donate their time and competences to support other women’s personal and professional growth and she is an ambassador of InspiringFifty, the program that aims at recognizing the top 50 tech inspirational women in Italy.