About
Hi, I'm Francesca.
Nerd. In love with science, dogs, and the underwater world. Scuba diver, world traveller, systems thinker. A great listener, a quiet observer, an endlessly curious human — inspired by innovation, deeply humbled by nature and the kindness of strangers, and living proof that there's always an alternative.
The short version
I'm an ICF Master Certified Coach, EMCC Coach and Mentor Supervisor, ICF Mentor Coach, and ICAgile-certified Expert Agile Coach.
My coaching experience spans one-to-one and team/group work, both as an internal coach inside a large global enterprise — where I helped HR build their internal coaching programme from scratch — and as an entrepreneur running my own practice.
Before coaching became my full-time work, I spent 20+ years in corporate IT: consulting, quality and testing management, business analysis, and agile coaching. I'm Italian, originally from Milan, and now based in Germany.
My story
Three chapters, one thread
Leaving Milan
I didn't leave Milan because I was running away from something. I was moving towards something: an environment where good work actually got rewarded, and where rules meant what they said instead of being a suggestion everyone quietly worked around. After watching merit lose out to politics and gender one too many times, I made the harder choice — for Germany, without speaking a word of German. It wasn't really a plan. It was a decision to stop waiting for something that wasn't going to change on its own.
Finding my purpose in tech
In tech, the pattern repeated: pay gaps, rooms where I was judged as much on how I looked as on what I delivered, and not a single woman in IT leadership I could point to and say, "I want to be like her." So I made a promise to my younger self — I'd become that person, instead of waiting to find her.
Becoming a digital nomad — and then a coach
In 2016, my partner and I sold most of what we owned and left Europe to spend over three years as digital nomads across Southeast Asia, building Geek Divers — our management system for dive centres and dive resorts — from nothing, one customer interview at a time. I became a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor along the way.
Coaching kept pulling me back in. I moved into an internal coaching role inside a large global enterprise, and after deciding to leave that permanent position to focus fully on my own practice, I began a collaboration with London Business School as an Executive Coach and Facilitator. By 2024, I'd left corporate employment for good to coach full-time.
Every one of those decisions felt disorienting and high-stakes at the time. Looking back, they all prove the same point: there was always an alternative. I just couldn't always see it without help. That's what I now help others do.
Why I do this work
If any of this sounds familiar
You don't have to have sold your belongings and moved continents, lived as an expat, spoken multiple languages, come from a technical background, or enjoyed dangerous sports for any of this to resonate. Maybe it's closer to home: the role that looks perfect on paper and doesn't feel like it anymore, the team dynamic you can't quite put your finger on, the nagging sense that you're capable of more than what's currently being asked of you. Maybe it's a new idea that doesn't have a shape yet, a dream you've talked yourself out of more times than you'd like to admit, the overwhelming feeling of too much to do and not enough time, motivation that seems to come and go, or the realisation that what used to work — at work, with yourself, in your relationships — doesn't anymore.
I've lived versions of that frustration more times than I can count — and every time, the answer wasn't some dramatic leap. It was getting honest with myself about what I actually valued, and then finding the closer, truer alternative I couldn't see before.
That's the work I do with clients now. Not telling you what to do — helping you see clearly enough to decide for yourself.
Credentials
The training behind the conversations
A few more details that don't fit neatly on a badge: a BS in Computer Science from Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, a TESOL certification from years of teaching English as a foreign language, and a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor (OWSI) and EFR Instructor rating. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 14 — tutoring was my first business — and I've been co-founder and Managing Partner of Geek Techware UG since 2017.
Ready to stop waiting?
If you're ready to stop waiting and start moving towards what you actually want, let's begin the conversation.