Foundation

Labour Friends of Italy is a foundation, established on 9 June 2010 and registered in England and Wales.  It is run by four executives who are assisted by a team of officers. The foundation has offices in London and Rome. To contact us click here.  LFIT also promotes a Parliamentary Group, a list of panelists and members can be found here. We also run a Think Tank of young political analysts, their profiles are listed here.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Fulvio Menghini, Managing Director, is Parliamentary Assistant at the House of Commons. He has worked in news, events and politics in Southern Europe, the US and the UK. Alongside his political activity he brings an extensive experience gained in over 3 years of civil rights advocacy back in Italy.

Marco Zappalorto, Director of Membership and Fundraising, works for the European Commission (DG Enterprise and Industry) within the London Chamber of Commerce where he provides support and advice to small and medium-sized enterprises on EU issues. With a background in Economics and International Trade, he specialised in the political economy of post-Communist countries.

Giovanni Faleg, Director of Research, is Ph.D. at the LSE European Institute. His research focuses on the lessons learned from EU’s operational experience in crisis management and their impact on the reform process of the European Security and Defence Policy. Giovanni graduated from the University of Strasbourg (2008) and spent one year at the Johns Hopkins University in Bologna as the Carlo Maria Santoro Fellow.

Michele Samoggia Zerbetto, Associate Director and LFIT coordinator for Italy, represents LFIT in Italy and runs the LFIT office in Rome. With a solid background in politics Michele currently works in Italy at Enel S.p.A. within the External Relations – Institutional Affairs division. He also sits in the Executive Board of Unicef Italy. Previously he worked for at FAO and for the Partito Democratico where he has been a member of the Youth Movement Executive Board.

OFFICERS

Anita Alfonsi, Membership and Events Officer, graduated from the University College London (UCL) in European Public Policy from UCL, and holds also an MA in Political and Public Communication from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. She recently completed an internship at Sandbag (London), as a policy researcher on Italy and EU-ETS.  She is very interested in climate change policies and look to build a career in communications related to sustainability issues. She holds dear her small village in Le Marche, although she has set her mind on living in Australia and France. She is addicted to coffee and hates when people associate Italy just to food, geography  and mafia.

Lorenzo Marini, Communications Officer and Online Contents Editor, is infatuated with all forms of media, from printed press to online networks. After graduating in Communications from the Universities of Bologna and Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), he completed a Msc Democracy and Democratisation at the University College of London. Currently an Intern at the European Council of Foreign Relations, Lorenzo specialised in media monitoring and content analysis, as he enjoys “watching the watchdogs”.

Natasha Valentina Sachs, International Relations Officer. Natasha is an Italian American who has spent several years working and studying in Italy. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the London School of Economics, she has focused her energies on international relations and campaign politics. She has worked at the US Embassy in Rome and more recently, as a journalist at the NBC London Bureau. Natasha brings her experience in international relations, with a decidedly American flavor, to this vision for developing inter-party dialogue. She is currently working for Google at their European Headquarters.

Nath Gbikpi,  Officer of Relations with Student Societies. French-Italian, born and grown up in Florence (Italy), with Burundian and Togolese origins. Passionate for travelling, and especially for Africa and Latin America, she is now studying Politics and Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She would like to specialize in migration and work in this field. Indeed, she is currently part of the SOAS Detainee Support Group, with which she does campaigning and visits at the Yarl’s Wood IRC.’