The Urban Land Institute (ULI) has announced the appointment of Emanuela Recchi, president of Recchi Engineering, as chair of ULI Italy. She succeeds Davide Albertini Petroni, managing director, Risanamento S.p.A, and will officially begin her voluntary two-year term on 1 July 2021.

ULI is the world’s oldest and largest network of cross-disciplinary real estate experts, with more than 45,000 members globally. ULI Italy involves over 100 leading real estate stakeholders from the private and public sectors representing all disciplines within the Italian commercial and residential property market. It has an active events calendar, including an Annual Conference and a Young Leaders programme (for members aged under 35).

Emanuela Recchi’s appointment was announced during the National Council’s Annual Conference on 16 June. Davide Albertini Petroni, outgoing chair of ULI Italy, said: “Emanuela has been a very enthusiastic ally of ULI Italy for many years and will be an excellent chair. As a well-respected industry leader, she is an innovative thinker with a multidisciplinary background, dedicated to ensuring that real estate projects bring positive, lasting change for communities. With her valuable experience, we expect the council to see further growth and deliver thought leadership, while enhancing the knowledge sharing between real estate professionals in Italy and beyond.”

Recchi has been an active supporter of ULI for many years and served on the ULI Italy Executive Committee. She is a strong advocate of finding common ground among financial, social and design considerations in order to make transformation of communities sustainable. About her appointment, she said: “What I value about ULI is that it is truly international, and truly cross-disciplinary. These two factors, together, are the perfect recipe for nourishing innovation and harnessing new ideas to shape the future. I hope to leverage this great recipe to give answers in these times of uncertainty and provide a valuable perspective on the future.”

As chair of ULI Italy, Recchi will prioritise raising the profile of ULI in Italy, particularly among younger professionals, to demonstrate how the global network is relevant to the issues that we are all facing. She adds: “I want ULI to become the place to be – a place where real estate professionals learn from each other’s experiences, share ideas, and meet people from different cultures to expand mindsets and create vision. Today, more than ever, we need to focus on meaning in the architecture and design of our built environment – the social value it can bring as well as the environmental impact.”

Lisette van Doorn, CEO of ULI Europe, said: “Emanuela is a visionary with a wealth of practical real estate experience and an impressive network across the industry. Her ability to bring people together from across disciplines will be valuable as ULI Italy continues to expand its programme of events and seeks to address the key challenges in the built environment. We look forward to working with her and the National Council’s Executive Committee in growing the membership and furthering the mission of ULI in Italy.”

Marnix Galle, chairman of ULI Europe and executive chairman of Belgian developer Immobel, said: “Italy is home to some of the most exciting and innovative real estate projects in the world right now. Emanuela has a wonderful opportunity to leverage the ULI platform to bring together the leading minds in our industry and to share best practice, with the aim of shaping the future of our built environment.”

Recchi is an architect and the president of Recchi Engineering, an engineering management firm owned by Recchi Ingegneria & Partecipazioni, a holding company that provides services in the engineering, real estate, IT, and energy savings sectors. She has collaborated with architectural studios around the world, and she has also authored numerous specialised publications.

Her background is in architecture, design and urban development, and she has a long track record in real estate. Early in her career, she was project manager for the realisation of the World Trade Center (San Benigno Executive Headquarters – Genoa) before becoming project manager for Recchi S.p.A. Costruzioni Generali. In 1989, she was appointed to the Board of Directors and the Technical Committee of Recchi S.p.A. Costruzioni Generali, tasked with the developing of the real estate sector. Since then, she became vice president of Recchi Ingegneria & Partecipazioni in 1999, and then president of Recchi Engineering in 2009.

Recchi is a RICS Fellow and a member of the Advisory Board at DAD (Department of Architecture and Design) CONSULTA of the Turin Polytechnic. Among her various national and international real estate memberships, she is also part of the General Board at Confindustria-Assoimmobiliare and president of the Innovation Committee. She holds a degree in architecture from Turin Polytechnic, and also took graduate courses in design management at Pratt Institute in New York, and in project management at Milan Polytechnic.

For more information about ULI Italy and its programme of events, visit italy.uli.org.