Diletta Cordone | Transformation Excellence Manager | Accenture

 

As an Italian woman with 7 years of experience in consulting, industry, and start-ups, I have lived and worked in Italy, France and the UK. My international perspective is my most precious asset, combined with the right level of ambition.

I grew up in Turin, pursuing a brilliant academic record, dreaming about moving to London and get a job in finance. I took all the right steps towards that goal, and after my bachelor’s degree in business administration, I decided to get a Master’s degree in management from ESCP, a prestigious French business school. The admission process was very selective, I also had to learn the basics of the French language in just three months to be able to pass the assessment. I was admitted into the 3-year international programme, and to accelerate my career, I undertook the first year of my Master’s while completing my last year of Bachelor’s in Turin.

After passing my fifteen exams on strategy, statistics, commercial laws and economics and an internship in accounting in FCA, I moved to London where I achieved an MSc in Management from City University and looked for an internship in finance. Supposedly that was my dream job, but my curious and inquisitive mindset pushed me to explore other opportunities, and I pivoted my plan. I worked three months in the marketing department of a multinational retail company, then moved to Paris to complete my studies and obtain my Diplôme de Grande École in finance.

Looking back, I now see that many of the decisions I made were influenced by an element of peer pressure from my network, which was highly male-dominated. I felt like the only way prove to my community that I was worthy of consideration was getting a well-paid job in finance. That’s why it took me three years to transition to a new career in the competitive consulting industry, strengthen even further my determination to excel.

I start to cultivate my passion for technology as business development analyst in a French start-up, then moved to consulting, joining Accenture in Paris and Deloitte in London. For almost four years I developed my functional and technical skills, working with cross-functional teams on applications development, infrastructure configuration, environment configuration, data migration and deployments strategies.

When I became too comfortable in my position, I moved towards my next challenge to explore the retail industry from the inside. I joined Marks & Spencer as Product Owner, owning the end-to-end delivery of two products in the allocation domain and contributed to two innovative proofs of concept in the sustainability space.

After one year, I decided to go back to consulting and leverage my experience in industry to succeed in delivery roles. From the first day I joined Accenture as Technology Strategy & Advisory consultant, I invested on developing my leadership skills, mentoring female colleagues, fostering an inclusive environment and championing diversity. I manage to achieve my goal to secure my promotion to Manager in just 6 months.

CAST YOUR VOTE OF SUPPORT NOW