Biography
Francesca Bria is an innovation economist and digital policy expert with extensive experience in scaling breakthrough technologies and building Europe's innovation ecosystem. She is President of Art-ER, the Italian Innovation Agency based in Bologna, where she oversees the regional AI diffusion strategy and the Italian AI Factory. She is the initiator and lead author of the EuroStack Initiative, a landmark strategic blueprint commissioned by the Bertelsmann Stiftung for Europe's technological sovereignty, setting out how the EU can develop digital sovereignty across semiconductors, AI, cloud, quantum computing, and data governance.
From 2020 to 2024, Dr. Bria served as President and Chairwoman of CDP Venture Capital SGR, Italy's National Innovation Fund, where she led public venture capital investments in deep tech startups and SMEs, managed a portfolio supporting breakthrough innovations in digital, green, and life sciences, and worked to bridge the funding gap for early-stage and growth companies scaling disruptive technologies across Europe. In this role, she gained firsthand experience of the challenges facing European innovators in accessing capital and scaling globally.
She is Honorary Professor at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose in London and a Senior Fellow at Stiftung Mercator in Berlin. She chairs the New European Bauhaus Expert Group, advising the European Commission on accelerating the EU Green Deal, and serves as a member of Spain's International Council on Artificial Intelligence.
From 2016 to 2019, Prof. Bria served as Chief Digital Technology and Innovation Officer for the City of Barcelona, where she led the city's digital transformation and pioneered participatory democracy initiatives. She co-founded the United Nations Cities Coalition for Digital Rights and led the EU's flagship DECODE project on data sovereignty. She is also a Senior Adviser to UN-Habitat on digital cities and digital rights.
Bria holds a PhD in Innovation Economics and Management from Imperial College London and an MSc in E-business and Innovation from University College London.
She has been recognised as one of Forbes' Top 50 Women in Tech, named among the World's Top 20 Most Influential People in Digital Government by Apolitical, and designated Culture Person of the Year 2020 by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She has been awarded Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.