A master’s degree from a top business school will almost certainly pay off in terms of salary. MSc in Management graduates from Bocconi University in Italy earn $85k on average three years after graduation. But another way to measure success is through your social impact.

Elena Falcettoni and Maria Vittoria Gronchi are two women for whom social impact is part of their everyday life. Elena is an economist at the US Federal Reserve, researching how policy can improve access to healthcare, while Maria Vittoria is the director of the COVID testing centers at New York City Health & Hospitals, reporting to Mayor Bill de Blasio. 

Both have an advanced skill set and practical experience from their master’s degrees at Bocconi University, programs which they credit to getting them to where they are today. 

Maria Vittoria Gronchi | Director of COVID Testing Centers, New York City Health & Hospitals

Five years ago, when Maria Vittoria had just graduated from her bachelor’s, she couldn’t have predicted what lay ahead. Global pandemics aside, she couldn't decide which direction she wanted her career to go in. 

“I’ve always been ambitious but value-driven, and want to make a difference in people’s lives,” she insists.

She’d majored in economics, and had an analytical background, but realized she desired more of a managerial competency in order to lead effectively. She was also aware of not limiting her opportunities. 

“I was looking for something that could open as many doors as possible in a field that I knew I was interested in,” Maria Vittoria explains. 

The MSc in Economics and Management of Government and International Organizations at Bocconi stood out for this reason. It allowed her to delve into different aspects of public sector roles and decide where she wanted to carve out her career. It also offered the opportunity of a double degree, enrolling in a Master of Public Administration (MPA) at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Albany, New York. 

It also helped show her the opportunities that were out there. In many of her classes, she met and listened to alumni from dozens of backgrounds across the public sector. “It really helped people like myself who didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do.”

Finding the right path to make a difference

From the get-go, Maria Vittoria’s professors were indispensable in helping her identify her ambitions and achieve her goals. 

“In the first month, the director and career service would sit with every one of us and ask us about our goals, and advise us about all the opportunities that would be best for us,” she explains. 

This quelled a concern that many students like Maria Vittoria had: that your opportunities in the public sector are far more limited than in the private sector.

Healthcare emerged as a key interest for Maria Vittoria. “On the one hand, healthcare is a human right, and we take it for granted, but we shouldn't. On the other hand, I come from a country where there are universal healthcare services, but we know that these systems have significant problems.”

Following her dual degree master’s, including a year spent in New York doing her MPA, Maria Vittoria set about finding the right role in public health. This included stints at the New York State Assembly, at the mayor’s office, before moving to New York Health & Hospital. 

All these roles had one thing in common—”critical thinking”—a skill she credits to her master’s. “Bocconi really taught me how to solve problems, with limited resources and time.”

No truer has this been than in her current role as director of COVID Test Centers in New York, which in April 2020 emerged as the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the US. It’s a rapid, ever changing environment which has forced Maria Vittoria to be agile. “News emerges everyday that could change your entire plan.”

But her master’s and her experience has taught her not to be paralyzed or overwhelmed by the problem, but to do something about it, something she hopes to bring back to Italy one day. “Many young folks complain about politics, but not many people want to build the competencies you need to get there and make a difference. I felt like I didn't want to complain, I wanted to do things to make a difference.” 

Next Page: Elena Falcettoni, Economist at the US Federal Reserve

Elena Falcettoni | Economist at the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors

Given Elena’s foundation in finance, many might have expected that she’d pursue a career at a top investment bank. 

She tried it out, with in-company training at Deutsche Bank and BlackRock, but she soon realized that she craved something that played more to her strengths. 

“Investment banking was interesting but felt a bit repetitive, and it wasn't about creating knowledge. I realised that I wanted to use the tools and training I had for something else,” Elena reveals. 

While doing her MSc in Finance at Bocconi, she was keen to broaden her outlook, and set about exploring the other opportunities that lay ahead for her. 

Elena was exposed to a highly international MSc in Finance program, which deepened what she already knew about finance. “You get trained as a person who is in an international program, and not as a person who should go straight to the closest bank and work there. The mindset from the get-go is that you are a citizen of the world.”

It also motivated her to drive changes in areas of finance that she wasn’t happy with, namely the gender imbalance in the industry. At Bocconi, she co-founded the Women in Business Association, which still exists to this day. 

“This came out of a desire to create a community for women, which would bring together great role models, showing the many different paths and fields of business, and letting women network with one another so they can know what opportunities lay in front of them.”

From a PhD to the Federal Reserve

Approaching the end of her MSc in Finance at Bocconi, a PhD in the US beckoned, and Elena was keen to put some of her knowledge and skills to good use. 

The analytical and practical mindset that she had built at Bocconi helped her to make this transition. “The MSc in Finance at Bocconi is very quantitative. That's one thing that you really need for a PhD in economics.”

Her PhD focused on industrial organization and health economics—”Using structural models of supply and demand to analyse how specific health markets work.” 

This led her to her current job at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she is continuing her research as an economist, hoping to implement policy which could impact access to healthcare for millions.

Her research is looking at the shortage of physicians in rural areas in the US, and how to use financial incentives to try and address this imbalance. “Physicians are high income people, so they really like living in places with better amenities. That's what it came down to—a trade off in the mind of the physician.”

Real life problems require practical solutions. One of Elena’s biggest takeaways from Bocconi was that any theorizing has to be backed up by action.

“My MSc in Finance was very practical, and it's the same kind of idea of using very quantitative tools to address real life issues,” she says. “As an applied economist, that’s what I’m still doing, just at a higher level.”