Valentina Valori #BreakTheBias

I am Valentina Valori R&D Technology Center Manager at Monselice, Italy. I’ve been in the company for a while, covering various positions, from Marketing & Sales to Technical Engineering. Now, I’m managing R&D teams in Italy and Bulgaria, respectively focused on Power Transformers and Power Transformers components. And I have to say that there’s no other job as exciting as R&D. Every day is a new start, a new challenge. It’s exciting and diverse at the same time. My two teams, too, are very diverse: many cultures, different academic and professional backgrounds, gender and even age diversity. Each and every one contributes by bringing his or her passion and expertise to our job.

In R&D, we explore and pioneer new solutions. Our moral duty is to make the world a better place, for our generation and those to come. Innovation is at the service of Sustainability, and I’m particularly glad that my personal purpose fits perfectly with Hitachi Energy’s purpose.

Innovation at our core

When I started my role in my present position, I immediately had the perception that, due to unconscious mindset of some people or their background or typical activities they were handling in the team, some invisible “barriers” were preventing them to believe themselves to be creative.

To enable this bias breaking, I organized for each team 6 iterations per year reserving a unique and dedicated space and time for their creativity to flow. It is where everybody is welcome to propose solutions, ideas, descriptions of specific topics without prejudices or criticism. Results were an impressive generation of new ideas in a span of a year which was never achieved before. We received a broad range of ideas from a lot of different people. This for me was really the biggest success.

We are taking on the most urgent challenges in our industry.

Our best gift for the community is, on one hand, to make our products and solutions more sustainable. We do this by developing new solutions such as adopting eco-friendly fluids and recyclable materials. Also, by optimizing resources and our manufacturing processes. On the other hand, Innovation is improving the quality of life – just think about Digitalization, Smart mobility, Decarbonization and Power quality objectives that are at core of our Hitachi Energy Research (HER).

I sincerely love my job and I feel a privilege to be part of such a global community where gender, culture, religion, or any kind of diversity is not seen as a barrier but more as a value to reinforce and leverage upon. This aspect in Hitachi Energy R&D is maybe even more visible, being international and cross-organizations collaboration almost a regular routine, due to nature of this work.

#ProudToBeHitachiEnergy for many reasons

I’m proud to work for a company with strong values and ethics, as this means respect for people and for our job. I’m proud of Hitachi Energy also because it gives a lot of opportunities for personal and professional growth, based on each individual determination and strengths, but regardless of age, culture, or gender. I’m proud of Hitachi Energy because it walks the talk: many times, I see our values in action and I like it.

I like making people happy and I’m particularly proud when people acknowledge this. I put people at the center. I want each member of my team to feel happy and satisfied about his or her career and work environment. I’d like them to succeed in accomplishing their professional and personal goals, and I do my best to support them.

Bias of any type can prevent the good energy inside all of us from flowing and can limit opportunities, they truly impede enriching our work and life. #BreakTheBias is the key theme for this year’s International Women’s Day. 

From when I joined the company in 2004, it is impressive to me how we have improved on gender diversity gap. I definitively see it in terms of awareness and culture. We are not yet there in terms of numbers. Female students enrolling in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at university are still less versus males. I clearly see it when reviewing candidates for interviews. 

There is still a journey in front of us. When I think of my kids, I feel deeply happy about the future work opportunity and environment they will find. I have a boy and a girl and intentionally I didn’t mention just my girl's future, since diversity is truly a global value and a real gain for all of us.