Marco Bardazzi is the co-founder of Bea - Be a Media Company, a strategic communication agency based in Milan, Italy.
Born in Prato, Tuscany, Marco is a professional journalist with 30 years of experience in the media business both in Europe and the U.S. He is a feature writer for the the Italian daily Il Foglio, covering American stories and politics.
From 2015 to 2020, Marco has been Communications Director at ENI. As Executive Vice President, he was in charge of external communications, digital strategy, data analytics and reputation management in the Italian-based energy company, which is active in 60 countries with about 34,000 employees.
Before joining ENI in 2015, he was Managing Editor and Digital Editor at La Stampa, a leading European newspaper based in Turin, Italy. Marco was a key member of the team that has worked on the transformation of a traditional newspaper founded in 1867 in an integrated digital news organization. He was a co-founder of the "Europa" partnership between six leading European newspapers: La Stampa, Le Monde, El País, The Guardian, Gazeta Wyborcza and Suddeutsche Zeitung.
For almost 10 years, before joining La Stampa, Marco was U.S. Correspondent for the Italian news agency ANSA. He has covered the 2000 Bush-Gore electoral race for the White House the first international Al Qaeda trial in Manhattan the September 11, 2001 attack on America the war in Afghanistan the war in Iraq the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. He has visited and reported on the Guantanamo detention camp at U.S. Navy Guantanamo Bay base, Cuba. Marco covered the 2008 financial crisis, and he has extensively reported on the American digital, energy and manufacturing businesses.
Marco teaches a course on Brand and Corporate Narratives at IULM University in Milan and a class on "Journalism innovation and new business models" at Master on Journalism, ALMED-Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. He attended the University of Florence, studying Political Sciences, and he holds an Associate of Arts degree in History from American Public University. He received a Corporate Affairs Academy certificate from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.
Marco has been a Board Member at Eni Gas & Luce S.p.A. and at AGI news agency. He is now Board Member at The Visual Agency. He was awarded the 2017 Communicator of the Year prize at Premio Ischia. As a journalist, he received the Premio di Giornalismo Saint-Vincent prize.
Marco’s latest book is Rapsodia Americana (BUR Rizzoli 2023), an essay on the U.S. political and social landscape on the eve of the 2024 Presidential campaign.
Previously, he wrote Silicon Europe (BUR Rizzoli 2022), an essay on the European semiconductor industry with a focus on the French-Italian company STMicroelectronics Ho fatto tutto per essere felice (BUR Rizzoli 2021) Content Strategy (EGEA, 2018, with Marco Alfieri and Corrado Paolucci) and L'Ultima Notizia (with Massimo Gaggi, Rizzoli 2010), an essay on digital transformation in the media business.
He wrote two books of stories on the United States (Sotto il cielo d'America and L'America che non ti hanno mai detto), a biography of Pope Benedict XVI (Nella vigna del signore - In the Vineyard of the Lord) and a novel based on the kidnapping of the son of Charles Lindbergh (La Scala Spezzata).