Monica Bravi: “I dream of becoming a serial entrepreneur”

Founder of a company that makes anthropology a support to medical care, the former Milanese manager aims at Switzerland via Bologna with MNEM

A successful entrepreneur and manager operating in the Health Care sector, but also a married woman, mother of two children and an extremely kind and prepared person thanks to a consolidated experience. This is the plausible identikit of Monica Bravi, a Milanese with a controlled denomination of origin who has created important companies in Emilia-Romagna. With a degree in Business Administration from the “Luigi Bocconi” Commercial University and a subsequent specialization in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Bologna, it is from this last course of study that, thanks to the meeting with her degree supervisor and future partner, the last of the entrepreneurial realities managed by this volcanic former manager from Lombardy was born.

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MNEM is a scientific research company, a solid reality that works with the tools of anthropology developed within the oldest university in the world, the Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna. The group collaborates with other clinical teams to intervene on people subject to pathologies that impair their cognitive abilities. Their research, reasoning in detail, investigates the field of behaviors and reactions and integrates advanced tools of artificial intelligence with predictive mechanisms of machine learning.
Their mission is to maintain and enhance the residual cognitive functions of sufferers and improve the quality of life of these people, reducing their apathy and isolation resulting from trauma.
 The company started its activity in October 2020 and, to date, operates in the most important Italian traumatology clinical district: the company plan foresees, starting from this year, to start the development abroad. In fact, within the MNEM business plan, the first targets have been identified in Switzerland.

What is your relationship with Switzerland and what made you decide to join the association Swiss Federalism? How do you evaluate your relationship with the association founded by Andrea Schenone? Do you think it could be useful, especially for your career and your entrepreneurial future, to take advantage of this network and of the possible synergies?
“I was born and I studied in Milan, and for us meneghini the closeness to the Swiss Confederation is first of all a cultural fact as well as an economic one: the Swiss model of economy and government is attractive and in any case essential in a global world, and in any case for Lombardy and Northern Italy”.

Monica Bravi seems to encompass multiple personal qualities: successful entrepreneur and manager with a particularly consolidated experience thanks to the numerous activities carried out to date. Outside the work context, however, who is she “really”? How would you describe yourself to those who haven’t already had the opportunity to meet you?
“I am very proud to be a mother of two wonderful children, and a wife who believes in her work as a professional and has always reconciled all the commitments of life, family, community of reference, non-profit activities, work and study. Above all, continuous training and study: last year I got my second degree in anthropology almost thirty years after my first degree, at Bocconi in Milan. And so you also know my age. And I can add that I really like getting older”.

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How do you fill your free time? Is there anything you’d like to do that you haven’t yet had the opportunity to accomplish, the famous “dream in the drawer”?
“My dream in the drawer comes true every day with the ideas that arise in the context of the companies and contacts, even informal, that I have. I am happy to have had a beautiful and satisfying career as a manager and now to have become an entrepreneur; perhaps the new dream will be to become a ‘serial’ entrepreneur. Maybe the three companies we have at the moment are not enough…”.

Based on your professional career, do you think a woman is “treated” differently than a man? If so, in what way? What is a useful recipe for a woman entrepreneur to succeed? Tell us about your experience
“I admit that I have been lucky, I have never felt any discrimination. I grew up immersed since the time of my family of origin and my father, an accountant in Milan, in a culture of hard work and merit. Male and female reptilians or aliens: anything goes, as long as you evaluate the facts and the results. I repeat: I have been lucky, as a woman and as a worker.

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Your CV shows that you received your Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology in 2019. What prompted you to deepen your studies in this direction? Why just recently and thirty years after the conclusion of the course of studies in Business Administration at Bocconi?
“Because understanding human behavior and its laws is an extraordinary value: studying the meaning of things that happen with scientific and rigorous tools helps to put everything in a clearer and broader perspective. It helps to understand wars in Africa rather than Wall Street in a broader way and with as many variables as possible. It broadens the vision, in short.”

Could you please tell us about MNEM’s corporate projects? What do you specifically deal with?
“We are a company of applied anthropology that works inside medical-assistance structures: our intervention protocol is addressed to people with problems of cognitive impairment, for example neurological pathologies, or psychiatric disorders. We aim to maintain and enhance residual cognitive functions of memory, language, perceptual functions, to reduce apathy and isolation following trauma. So we put the anthropological protocol of memory reinforcement at the service of rehabilitation, all together with medical specialists in trauma or cognitive degeneration”.

His CV reads: “Founding Partner and President of MNEM”. Was the idea of founding a society of applied anthropology born from the influence resulting from your studies completed in 2019 or was it a “desire” that had been brooding for some time?
“It was born from meeting my graduate advisor, an extraordinary woman and professor, Francesca Sbardella, who later became my very important partner in this research adventure…”.

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What are your biggest regrets and regrets? Is there anything you have regretted doing or, conversely, not doing, in life as well as in your career? Why?
“If I had the time, and I don’t so this is a rhetorical question, I would have as my only regret not having started a few years earlier as an entrepreneur.”

What is your relationship with Bologna? How much do you think the relationship between the territory and the company has influenced the success of your activities?
“I believe that a great university is a hub of ideas and attraction of talent: Bologna is included in the circuit of the largest universities in the world that deal with medicine, medical care and assistance: for us at MNEM, this is very important…”

What do you expect from your collaborators and friends? What attitudes bother you most about others? Are you a tolerant person or do you find it difficult to forgive misunderstandings and insults? What “sanctions” do you adopt, if any?
“I believe I have a fact-based leadership style. I’m demanding and I try to create conditions so that everyone gives their best, first of all because they ‘believe it’, and then because the work environment rewards individual success and creativity. I have a patient nature, it’s difficult for me to lose sight of the real goal and let myself go into a state of annoyance or disappointment, with the exception of those who cancel an appointment half an hour before…”.

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