Professor Antonella Salvatore Welcomes Alumna Chiara Di Vito
Professor Antonella Salvatore welcomed alumna Chiara Di Vito to her Professional Skills for Career Development class on March 10, 2023. Chiara graduated from JCU in 2020 with a B.A. in Marketing and a minor in Entrepreneurship, and then went on to earn an Italian Master di I livello in International Marketing Management – Omnichannel and Consumer Analytics from MIP Politecnico di Milano.
Chiara Di Vito
Coming from an entrepreneurial family, she always knew she wanted to go into the business industry. In 2017, she started working as spokesperson for Torpedino, her family’s tomato business. In 2018, Chiara worked as copywriter at Assodonna, a project that supports women in entrepreneurship by providing courses that help them launch their businesses. Her main responsibilities were writing and editing articles, and working on Search Engine Optimization.
In the summer of 2018, Chiara studied abroad in Boston, where she did an internship at Conscioux, a startup that focused on health and nutrition. In her role as content contributor, she was mainly responsible for researching and brainstorming ideas, preparing presentations, and selecting relevant articles. Chiara said that interning at a startup in a foreign country increased her adaptability, organization, and ability to work in a multicultural environment.
After earning her master’s degree, Chiara started working as marketing intern at Mulino Bianco, an Italian brand that produces cookies, cakes, and snacks. She explained that in this role she had to learn to extract data on the Nielsen Answers software and then analyze it according to the main key performance indicators. She was also responsible for the creation and delivery of the monthly cross-category report to the top management. This experience allowed her to hone her problem-solving skills, as well as increase her critical thinking, attention to detail, and accuracy.
After this internship, Chiara was promoted to Sales Representative for the Barilla Group in the Naples area. She focused on sell-out activities in the supermarkets assigned to her. The term sell out refers to the number of units of a brand sold to final consumers at points of sale. She explained that she was assigned 34 supermarkets that she would visit every week, and negotiate the number of products that would be discounted based on past sales’ records. She was also responsible for organizing the products on the shelves to increase sales and visibility for all the products of the brand.
Chiara explained that her studies at JCU and her professional experiences helped her grow professionally and personally, and gave her the tools necessary to pursue a career in the business/marketing industry. “I believe that hard work, commitment, and humility are the key drivers for success,” she said. She concluded by telling students that soft skills such as empathy, teamwork, and adaptability are very important in the current professional landscape.
