Meet Michela D’Isita

Head of HR Michela D’Isita helped build the alumni program. Now that she has moved on from AlixPartners, those connections fuel her work.

Her career shows that you never completely leave a firm you love.

Michela D’Isita has had a frontline view of hundreds of careers at the same time as she built her own. She first obtained a Bachelor’s of Science majoring in Psychology from La Sapienza University in Rome, going on to work in learning architecture in a change management program. That early work funded her Master’s of Science majoring in Organization and Human Resources from Bocconi University. From there, she moved into human resources and on to a job in Kazakhstan to gain international experience.

“I thought, OK, this will be a three months’ experience where I will see a different side of the world,” says Michela. “But in reality, I ended up spending three years there.” She was hooked on the opportunity to build something from scratch and to help a company scale.

The drive to start a family brought her back to Europe, and to a job at AlixPartners. But not without getting to a critical crossroads.

Although she had already accepted another in-house job offer as she was starting the recruiting process for AlixPartners, a series of positive interviews convinced her to take a chance on a contract role with the firm. “I had really a strong feeling in terms of culture, beliefs, and values, which were confirmed when I joined the company,” says Michela.

Attending an all-firm event, she recalls a buzzing energy as CEO Simon Freakley took the stage: the lights shone on a rapidly growing firm that wasn’t compromising on its culture.

That was the start of a six-year journey at AlixPartners as People Business Partner and Resource Manager for EMEA. In that role, she helped the firm to adapt to several major changes–from community to country groupings, and from country to service offerings models–she assisted the evolution of the global compensation process and kick-started the AlixAlumni program.

Michela was often sought out by colleagues looking for advice on career moves, and gained a key mentor herself in Paolo Rinaldini, Partner & Managing Director. When an opportunity arose to step into a senior role as Head of Human Resources for Ambienta, a sustainability-focused European asset manager and a leader in applying environmental sustainability trends to investing, creating a firm mandate from the ground up, Paolo’s support went with her. So did the foundation of AlixPartners’ core values.

"I still think that respect, common sense, communication, and teamwork are the key of every organization. That is something that I tried to bring with me."

Moving from consulting to a sustainability-focused asset manager gave her an opportunity to appreciate the untapped value of companies from a different perspective. AlixPartners remains her go-to for due diligence services, but Michela’s new role has opened up the scope of her work to managing initiatives across the board of Ambienta.

When Michela joined Ambienta, she was employee number 51 in a scaling organization that doubled in size in a few years, adding new strategies and enhancing their international presence. However, job changes are not easy, especially later in your career when you have children to support and there is more to uproot. For that reason, she often advises AlixPartners colleagues to look for opportunities to build and shift their career within the firm, before they make a more radical change.

She is also a keen advocate for the alumni program, which provides community and knowledge for all its members. It has also connected her to AlixPartners alumni who subsequently joined her firm, as well as some still in-house, who cover key roles in Ambienta’s portfolio companies.

“I think the alumni program gives you the opportunity to be proud of what happened to the colleagues you had the pleasure to work with.” Having moved on herself, she appreciates the commonalities of alumni who spent time with the firm. “You can recognize people who worked at AlixPartners from a distance because we share the same values, the same way of respecting people.”

She tries to embed those values in her new role as well as in her parenting–she has a 11-year-old son, Tommaso.

Michela is still in contact with most of her former workmates, and even gets to work with some of them. “I'm truly proud because some of my colleagues are working with AlixPartners and this time, we are the clients.”