Bio

Valentina Montalto is a culture and creative industries' (CCIs) specialist with +14 year work experience.  In June 2022, Valentina established her own company in Paris, offering independent research and advisory services to international, national and local organisations such as UNESCO, the European Commission, the French Ministry of Culture as well as a number of local authorities.  From 2016 until 2022, Valentina worked as Policy Analyst on Cultural Economy & Creative Cities at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission at Ispra, Italy, where she is in charge of the development of the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor, a novel benchmarking tool aimed at assessing the performance of nearly 200 cultural and creative cities across Europe using 29 quantitative indicators and qualitative data. Previously, she worked as senior reseacher and project manager at KEA, a leading Brussels-based research and advisory company specialised in the field of CCIs, where she seconded the KEA's founder and director Philippe Kern and co-authored various policy-oriented reports assessing the potential of culture for local and regional development. 

Her background is in statistics for the social sciences (KU Leuven - QASS Master Degree, 2015), cultural economics and management (University of Bologna - GIOCA Master Degree, 2009), and tourism economics (University of Palermo - EGST Bachelor Degree 2006). Valentina was a student at the Collegio Superiore - Excellence School of the University of Bologna - and visiting student at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh (USA) and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon (France). 

Valentina speaks Italian (mother tongue), English, French and Spanish.