Professor Antonella Salvatore Welcomes Alumna Camilla Voltolini from Canossa Events
Professor Antonella Salvatore welcomed alumna Camilla Voltolini to her Professional Skills for Career Development class on September 29, 2023. Camilla graduated from JCU in 2017 with a B.A. in Communications and a minor in Business Administration. After working at Maserati and Volkswagen, she is currently general manager at Canossa Events International, headquartered in Dubai.
Canossa Events is a company that organizes national and international driving events to provide exclusive experiences. It has offices in Reggio Emilia, Milan, Dubai, and Miami.
During her senior year, Camilla interned at the JCU offices of Italian Admissions, Web Communications, and Special Projects & Events. After graduation, Camilla continued to work for the office of Special Projects & Events for eight months. “I think that through a series of coincidences and choices, since I started working in the Special Projects & Events office, everything has fallen into place,” she said.
Through the Career Services Center, she then found an internship at Canossa Events. Camilla was already familiar with the company because a few months earlier, in Professor Silvia Pulino’s Strategic Management class, she met its president and founder Luigi Orlandini. Camilla worked for three months in the company’s events section, touring 12 countries for the roadshow of Ferrari (Canossa Events’ largest client), which featured the new Ferrari Portofino model.
The experience was instrumental for Camilla in realizing that she wanted to work in the events industry. Therefore, when Canossa Events offered her new positions in hospitality management, she decided to look at something that reflected her interests more closely. At the end of 2018, Camilla moved to Modena for a one-year internship at Maserati where she was involved in global deal network training and the Master Maserati Driving Experience. She then started an internship at Volkswagen in Verona, her hometown. Camilla worked in Volkswagen’s advanced and fleet management office and dealt with B2B agreements with other companies.
Halfway through her internship at Volkswagen, Camilla got a call from Canossa Events asking if she would be interested in a project management position. She accepted the one-year contract and in early 2020 she moved to “Motor Valley,” in Emilia-Romagna where some of the world’s most important automotive and motorcycle brands are located. Although business worsened terribly during the COVID-19 pandemic, Canossa Events decided to extend Camilla’s contract for another year. She then had the opportunity to oversee more events, eventually becoming Project Manager of the Cavalcade Classiche 2023 in Tuscany last September. Cavalcade is the most exclusive event that Ferrari organizes every year around the world for its top collectors.
Camilla has recently been promoted to General Manager of Canossa Events International and will be responsible for their Dubai offices. “When I started, I had no concrete experience with events planning, but carefully observing what experienced people were doing was the key to learning,” she said. Camilla concluded by mentioning the change the automotive industry is trying to pursue toward sustainability. She said that Canossa Events participates in the Zero Carbon Target program whereby they monitor the emissions and environmental impact that each event has and strive to contain them as much as possible.
