She works for British Prime Minister David Cameron. He is the data editor for the English newspaper The Guardian. Alice Pilia and Alberto Nardelli have lived together in London for ten years, but they met in 1998 when they were studying Political Science at LUISS.
Alice Pilia recalls that they both began working during their last year of university, "I worked for the Glocal Forum association, where I stayed for four years, first in Rome and then in Barcelona, working with mayors from all around the world on projects involving international cooperation. Alberto worked for the Digital Youth Consortium, handling digitalization projects for the city of Rome."
"But I moved to Canada right after that,” clarifies Nardelli, “to work for the TakingITGlobal platform, which deals with projects concerning creativity and the digital divide.” After a while, in 2004, Alice and Alberto decided to move to London to be together and to do, respectively, a Master in Local Economic Development at the London School of Economics, and a Master in Media and Communication Studies at Goldsmiths University of London. "The idea was to stay in England one year, like most people do, but then we ended up staying," they explain: "We found a very transparent labor market; most of the offers were published in newspapers and on companies’ internet sites. We sent out a lot of CVs and got some interesting offers."
"I began working for the UnLtd foundation,” explains Alberto Nardelli, “which offers grants for social entrepreneurs." There he got the idea of creating a network to connect companies at different stages of their business development, UnLtdWorld, which was acquired by the business side of the Guardian in 2011. During those years he founded the Tweetminster platform, created as a service to find and follow parliamentarians on Twitter, and starting in 2012 @electionista, a live feed of news and opinion polls from over 100 countries that follow election trends all over the world. Then, in July 2014, the Guardian hired him as a data editor: "My job is to commission, write and manage the section of the site for data-based stories, and then talk about politics, sports and economics from an objective and quantitative point of view."
After the master, Alice Pilia worked on different projects with international non-profit organizations in the private sector and then, in 2007, she began working as a Strategy Officer for the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone: "I worked on London 2020, the program to design a strategy for the Legacy of the Olympic Games. Then the mayor lost the election, I lost my job, and someone suggested that I check the central government site: I thought that, as an Italian, I wouldn’t be able to access the offers, but in fact England respects European anti-discrimination laws and any EU citizen can apply." After a public competition involving a series of interviews and tests, Alice began working for the Central Office of Information, the department of the Cabinet Office of the English government, which handles public information: "My job was to identify the most suitable partners for conveying certain government messages to citizens, applying economic behavioral theories such as nudging to find solutions and trying to mitigate social problems.” In 2011 she began working in the Cabinet Office and since then she has dealt with reforms and strategic reviews "from the legislative legal system to several projects involving cuts and simplification, as well as the referendum in Scotland."
Today Alice and Alberto are married and have lived in London for over 10 years, but they go back frequently to LUISS because they both have friends and relatives that have graduated from here. "When we were there, the Political Science Department wasn’t that big; we all knew each other," says Alice: "We took part in a lot of extracurricular activities: I did volunteer work, I wrote for two university newspapers, first for Fingerprint, whose founder and editor-in-chief was Pier Luigi Petrillo, which then became The Factory in 2001, and I was part of the editorial staff of Ermes, the Journal of Political Science."
"I, on the other hand, was the top scorer on the soccer team at our faculty," recalls Alberto: "We were even in the finals against the other universities of Rome. I did much better on the field than, for example, in the exams of Alice’s supervisor, Professor Sacco."
"One of the things that impressed me the most about LUISS,” says Alice, “is the possibility of interacting directly and spontaneously with the administration and the professors, especially to ask for support for student initiatives, from the theater course to newspapers: a level of availability that I believe is difficult to find in other places."
"LUISS,” continues Alberto Nardelli, “gave us the possibility of cultivating interests and relationships beyond the lectures we attended: this type of environment is important because it helps you understand what truly interests you, to develop you as a person in a broader way, beyond the material that you study and the grades you get."
They both graduated in 2002, four days apart: "In those years there was no need to leave Italy to do something interesting, we didn’t escape: it was just curiosity, the desire to travel and to have different experiences." And if a good offer came from Italy they both would be willing to move back: "It’s not about where you are, but about getting the opportunity to do what you love."