Hi, I'm Gabriele.

Where It All Began

At fifteen, a scholarship took me across the Atlantic—and set everything else in motion.

A full scholarship from Telecom Italia gave me the opportunity to spend a year at high school in the United States. Living abroad deepened my fascination with people, cultures and human relationships while strengthening a dream I had carried since childhood: working at Apple.

After watching Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address, I saved enough to buy an iPod nano—my first Apple device, and a small symbol of the direction I hoped my life would take.

Take a look at the scholarship certificate that made my journey to the United States possible.

View certificate

Two Paths, One Direction

The curiosity sparked in the United States soon became two parallel paths: Psychology and Apple.

I was simultaneously admitted to the Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and hired part-time by Apple, as part of the original team that opened its Piazza Liberty flagship store in Milan.

Near graduation, those paths began to converge. Apple invited me to move to Barcelona and join a newly forming corporate AIML team full-time—once again giving me the opportunity to help build something from its earliest stage.

Watch the Piazza Liberty opening—and see if you can spot me in the crowd at 2:46.

Watch the opening

My Time at Apple Barcelona

In Barcelona, Psychology and technology finally became part of the same path.

Apple’s AIML Data Operations felt like a startup at global scale. I began as an analyst improving Siri across the Italian and English locales, then moved into early testing of Vision Pro and Apple Intelligence.

My Psychology background led to my selection, from 400 analysts, for a six-month Learning & Development assignment. Working with Cupertino leadership and teams from Austin to Yokohama, I redesigned onboarding for seven AIML sites, onboarded 50 new analysts—95% certified on their first attempt—and contributed to a guideline-update knowledge check taken by 3,000 analysts worldwide.

The highlight was taking full creative ownership of a workshop that translated adult-learning principles into practice through the STAR method. Seeing behavioural knowledge shape complex technology pushed me to explore Human–Computer Interaction more deeply.

Take a look at the slides from my STAR-method workshop.

View the deck

A New Chapter in Trento

After learning how AI systems are built at scale, I wanted to understand how to design them around people.

So I took a long leave of absence from Apple to pursue a Master’s degree in Human–Computer Interaction at the University of Trento—admitted through a video pitch rather than a transcript, which felt like the right way into a field built on communicating ideas clearly.

The programme let me connect the threads I had been carrying separately: Psychology, UX research, interaction design and AI. It gave me the vocabulary and the methods to turn questions about people into something that could actually be built.

Watch the video pitch that led to my admission to Trento.

Watch the pitch

Building UniMate (formerly MyVision)

The questions I brought to Trento became a product designed to help students make better decisions.

Choosing my own Master’s had meant navigating scattered university websites and unreliable AI answers. A market-validation survey with the University of Trento’s School of Innovation brought the problem into focus: 74% of respondents reported difficulties with the digital tools available for academic guidance. UniMate grew straight out of that validated problem, at the intersection of Psychology, Human–Computer Interaction and AI.

With an international, multidisciplinary team I met in Trento, it moved from research into a structured product: a conversational platform grounded in verified institutional sources, and a business case for reaching students at scale.

That structure is what made it ready for a far larger stage.

Explore the business-plan slides that shaped UniMate’s development.

View the deck

From MyVision to Brussels

What began as a university idea eventually reached the European Commission stage.

Under its original name, MyVision, the project entered DigiEduHack—the European Commission’s flagship competition for digital innovation in education—and was named Global Winner of the 2024 edition.

That result took us to Brussels to present the work, and opened an international network of researchers and innovators which later led to a peer-reviewed publication and a research collaboration with Tampere University in Finland.

It confirmed what the previous years had suggested: human-centred research, AI and product thinking are strongest together.

Watch the MyVision pitch that took us to the European Commission stage.

Watch the pitch

What’s Next

The journey now continues with POLIMI GSoM backing my next chapter through a merit scholarship.

POLIMI Graduate School of Management chose to support my development through a merit scholarship for its part-time International MBA, as I return to full-time work opportunities.

The programme will help me expand my professional network, deepen my management skills and add a stronger business perspective to the human-centred products I want to build next.

Not a departure from the path so far, but its next evolution: people, technology, product thinking and business leadership in one place.

Watch the pitch that earned me the merit scholarship.

Watch the pitch