SIM Alumni

Francesca Folda

Independent Strategy and Impact Consultant

Francesca is an Italian award-winning journalist and executive manager, with over 25-year experience in the media industry and the impact sector who believes communication is a powerful tool for change making when messages and values align. At the beginning of her career, she wrote for the Italian leading press agency, ANSA, and the main Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. Hired as an investigative journalist at Panorama, a weekly newsmagazine, for 9 years she covered extensively the mafia, social and post-conflict issues, and foreign affairs. She also reported from the Balkans and Afghanistan, after joining a training program by the Italian Department of Defense for journalists in crisis areas.

Exploring different media, she played increasingly relevant roles in the Italian publishing industry, innovating both products and processes. Director of all the digital properties of Sky Italia, she created independent newsrooms for SkyTg24.it, SkySport.it and many other satellite websites. As Editor in Chief at Focus, the most sold Italian magazine dealing with popular science, she led a digital transformation process that ensured the publication's sustainability in a shrinking print market.

A firm believer in life-long learning, in 2014, she resigned for a sabbatical to gain global perspectives and fully experience the mobile revolution. She became an Amani Institute Fellow in Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived and worked for two years. She also gained a diploma in Social Innovation at the UN Mandated University for Peace in 2016. Since then, Francesca focused on applying her skills, network, and experience to support global social impact projects. Back in Italy, she became Head of Cultural Impact and Corporate Communication at Sky Italia. From 2018 to 2022 she served as Amani Institute Global Communication Director,  working remotely with frequent travel to Kenya, India and Brazil.

Francesca is now working as an independent Strategy and Impact Consultant for profit and non-profit organizations all over the world. Visiting Professor at the School of Journalism – Università La Statale, in Milan, she also sits on the Advisory Council of Ashoka Italy.