Valeria built one of the first online communities associated with Fast Company magazine. A brand strategist with 20 years of real-world corporate experience, 10 of which online, she’s worked with Fortune 500 and small start up companies in 5 industries. She specializes in taking companies to what’s next in their business cycle through marketing communications, customer dialogue, and brand advocacy.

Conversation Agent is ranked among the top 25 marketing blogs in the world on AdAge Power150. Handpicked by Fast Company as Expert blogger, Valeria is on the Advisory Board of SmartBrief on Social Media and a co-author of The Age of Conversation, a groundbreaking eBook collaboration by 103 of today’s top marketing writers. An active member of the Social Media Business Council, the American Marketing Association (AMA), and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Valeria is an Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) and a Board Member at large of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

Valeria is a frequent speaker on branding, integrating marketing and social media to serve business strategy, and customer conversations as the new marketing. She publishes in both English and Italian. Educated at the University of Bologna and Villanova University, Valeria combines New World sensibilities with Italian style.

From early 2000 to 2008, she has been the chair of a Philadelphia professionals organization tied to Fast Company magazine and was the key force in building it up to a membership of over four hundred. There she launched the content series, where her focus was on crystallizing ideas and the trends of the future of work. She championed problem-solving teams and learning workshops, driving an attendance increase of over seventy percent in two years.

Valeria has played a leading role in hosting authors and thought leaders from many fields, including Pernille Lopez, then President of IKEA North America, Glen Senk, President of Anthropologie, Mike Useem, Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at Wharton, Dan Pink, author of Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind, John Byrne, editor of Straight from the Gut and Executive Editor at Business Week, Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect, Bill Jensen, author of Work 2.0 and What is Your Life’s Work?, Mike Abrashoff, author of It’s Your Ship: Leadership Lessons Learned from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy, Denis Haley, CEO of Academy Leadership, Stephen Shapiro, author of Goal Free Living, Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre, authors of Mavericks at Work.

Her passion and drive to learn from, understand and practice in the fields of communications and marketing takes the form of engaging conversations where content, product and service providers come together with audiences, customers and publics to create meaning. These take the form of regional workshops, peer round tables, and panel discussions. The goal: use the network’s diversity of skills, experience and practices to quickly develop and execute on ideas that work, and sell, in the marketplace. Over the years, more than 1,500 professionals have participated in the network’s various programs.

Valeria established partnerships with Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, Villanova University, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Fox School of Business at Temple University to produce the main Speakers Series – an invitation thought leadership series hosted by the business schools to benefit the students. She now sits on the Advisory Board of The Fox School of Business at Temple University International MBA Enterprise Management Consulting.

In 2006 she mentored a peer team to launch a Fast Company magazine readers’ network subgroup in partnership with the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). Career Transitions’ vision continues to be to assist and support members in search of meaningful work. Several of the leading search firms and headhunters have been invited to participate online and offline.

Along with business programs, Valeria guest lectures and moderates panels at renown marketing conferences, Chambers of Commerce, and professional organizations on topics such as “How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy”, “The Future of Advertising”, “Making Your Web Site Sticky” and “Building a Great Brand”.

Her feature article Strength in Numbers on integrating PR, advertising and marketing for a more interactive and engaging experience was published by CW magazine in November/December 2009 (browse a facsimile of the article here). She has had interviews published by Postmagazine supplement and Fast Company magazine and her introduction to “Working and Writing in Groups” was published in Ohio State University Prof. Locker’s Business and Administrative Communications, 6/e (2003, McGraw-Hill). Italian management consulting firm Trivioquadrivio has published her essays on Distance in Conversations, Make it Real; Authenticity is for Profit and Representation as Creation on the increasing importance of social networks and blogs.