We all love stories, we are born from them. Stories affirm who we are. We all want affirmations that our lives have meaning, and nothing does a greater affirmation than when we connect through stories.

So, what if I could tell you my business journey as a story. As we set out for our “Ithaka”, hoping the road to be a long one, full of adventures, full of discoveries, simply follow the development of our very own start-up and see how we radicalise the way business creates value and how we are developed as a company, and how we learn along the way.

I am a strong believer of the idiom that work can be a source of real happiness, which I define as a deep and abiding enjoyment of daily activities fuelled by passion for a meaningful purpose, a hopeful view of the future, and true friendships. As most of the successful executives I was not feeling fulfilled from the job I was doing and thus I could not find true meaning in my work.

I always wanted for my work to have an impact, to have purpose and meaning since in the absence of meaning I cannot fuel passion, energy, intelligence, creativity. For me business is not merely a daily chore to make money, but essential to what I care about; what my life is about. Changing values in society, and values-based orientations that societal actors and individuals inevitably pursue, impact and redefine business strategies and practices.

Purpose is fundamental in our life long journey, pursuing happiness. Having discovered which aspects of my job are truly fulfilling and which are soul destroying, I am facing choices about how to spend my time and what to pursue in my career. I was able to envision a vision of what I wanted from my work, one that relied not on getting the next promotion or winning some endless game but on the kind of life I wanted to lead. My evolved vision as it has been developed over the past years is unique, innovative and above all it integrates many sciences at the highest level.

I chose to start this new chapter of my life and aiming to reinvent myself by getting all the help and inspiration I could get by enriching my knowledge and personal network by enrolling back in 2018 for the EMBA programme of the University of Cambridge. During this personal transformation journey, knowledge and learning came naturally by simply being engaged. My 20-month transformational journey provided me with life-changing self-awareness. My thesis was a written testimony of my evolved strategy for building a sustainable great company worthy to last. Now, my thesis has become my life purpose and I am eagerly implementing my vision with Centaur.tech and to offer value to the world.

Great leaders can inspire people to act. Those who can inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained. Those who truly lead can create a following or people who act not because they were swayed, but because they were inspired. I really hope that my actions will inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and thus become more. For the people that I have inspired, the motivation to act is deeply personal. They are not swayed by incentives or because they have to, but because they want to… and the end result… they deliver excellence.