Marco Bardazzi

Marco Bardazzi is the co-founder of Bea – Be a Media Company, a strategic communication agency based in Milan, Italy. From 2015 to 2020, Marco was Communications Director at ENI. As Executive Vice President, he was in charge of external communications, digital strategy, data analytics, and reputation management for the Italian-based energy company, which is active in 60 countries with about 34,000 employees.

Born in Prato, Tuscany, in 1967, Marco is a professional journalist with almost thirty years of experience in the media business in both Europe and the U.S.

Before joining ENI in 2015, he was Managing Editor and Digital Editor at La Stampa, a leading European newspaper based in Turin, Italy. Marco was a key member of the team that has worked on the transformation of a traditional newspaper founded in 1867 in an integrated digital news organization. He was a co-founder of the “Europa” partnership between six leading European newspapers: La Stampa, Le Monde, El País, The Guardian, Gazeta Wyborcza and Suddeutsche Zeitung.

For almost 10 years, before joining La Stampa, Marco was U.S. Correspondent for the Italian news agency ANSA. He has covered the 2000 Bush-Gore electoral race for the White House the first international Al Qaeda trial in Manhattan the September 11, 2001 attack on America the war in Afghanistan the war in Iraq the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. He has visited and reported on the Guantanamo detention camp at U.S. Navy Guantanamo Bay base, Cuba. Marco covered the 2008 financial crisis, and he has extensively reported on the American digital, energy, and manufacturing businesses.

Marco teaches a class on “Journalism Innovation and New Business Models” for the Masters in Journalism degree at ALMED-Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. He attended the University of Florence, studying Political Science, and he holds an Associate of Arts degree in History from American Public University. He received a Corporate Affairs Academy certificate from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

Marco has been a Board Member at Eni Gas & Luce S.p.A. and at AGI news agency. He is now Board Member at The Visual Agency. He was awarded the 2017 Communicator of the Year prize at Premio Ischia. As a journalist, he received the Premio di Giornalismo Saint-Vincent prize.

Marco’s latest book is Silicon Europe (BUR Rizzoli 2022), an essay on the European semiconductor industry with a focus on the French-Italian company STMicroelectronics. Previously, he wrote Ho fatto tutto per essere felice (BUR Rizzoli 2021, translated into English as Everthing I Did I Did for Happiness) Content Strategy (EGEA, 2018, with Marco Alfieri and Corrado Paolucci) and L’Ultima Notizia (with Massimo Gaggi, Rizzoli 2010), an essay on digital transformation in the media business. He wrote two books of essays on the United States (Sotto il cielo d’America and L’America che non ti hanno mai detto), a biography of Pope Benedict XVI (Nella vigna del signore – In the Vineyard of the Lord) and a novel based on the kidnapping of the son Charles Lindbergh (La Scala Spezzata).