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#WeAreLeonardo, a journey into the Cyber world with Ilaria

08 October 2024

The cyber sector is often seen as something abstract, but in Leonardo it is possible to experience its concrete impact. This is explained by Ilaria Odoardi, Project Management Office (PMO) Planner of the Cyber & Security business area at the Chieti (Abruzzo, Italy) site, who describes her path, the activities of her team and one of the most interesting projects among those she has worked on in her different roles within the Group.

Born in Abruzzo, for Ilaria Odoardi the chance to join Leonardo coincided with the choice to move back home, after an experience in Milan. An opportunity that came her way in 2018, when she applied for an open position at Leonardo's site in Chieti. Joining the Group also meant discovering new professional horizons: “my idea was to specialise as a data scientist but, having discovered a passion for the management and organisational aspect, I was able to follow this path, growing in just a few years.”

Today, Ilaria is a PMO Planner and, over the years, has overseen projects that have brought her into contact with key stakeholders such as institutions and the Italian Armed Forces. “One of the projects I am most attached to is the Investigation Support System (ISS), which I worked on as Project Engineering Manager in 2019, when I had recently joined the company. The aim was to develop a system to support law enforcement in investigations by providing a comprehensive environment for collecting, searching, and analysing data from different sources.” By correlating a variety of data and also analysing open sources, the system makes it possible to trace the origin of perpetrators of events or actions that pose a danger or threat, such as the online posting of a subversive group.

Experiencing the concrete impact of her work has been a satisfaction since her first days at Leonardo. When she joined the company, Ilaria was among the youngest members of her team. Today, new hires are increasingly young, in many cases fresh out of university or technical-scientific institutes. “This is a very positive trend, as it allows for the integration of young professionals with the experience of those who have been here longer. This skill-sharing creates a stimulating environment, where young people can grow quickly and learn daily.”