Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta

Chief Diversity Officer

European Space Agency (ESA), France

Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta has been working at the European Space Agency since 1991 and she is currently Chief Diversity Officer. During her career at ESA, she held several positions, including elaboration of high-level strategy, formulation of policies, international relations, strategic analysis, relations with Member States, network with Think Tanks. She has supported the creation of the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna. She participated to the formulation of the first ESA Exploration programme, worked as coordinator of Science and Human Spaceflight activities and had the responsibility as Executive Secretary of the Science and Technology Advisory Group on Exploration in charge of selecting experiments for exploration missions, including ExoMars.

She spent four years at the ESA Washington Office in charge of relations with NASA and US stakeholders, and was Member of the Board of Directors of Women in Aerospace US. Currently she is member of the Standard Ethics Rating Committee. She holds a Degree in Physics, with specialisation in Astrophysics and has a further education in Economics. During her studies she has been awarded with Amelia Earhart Fellowship in recognition of distinctive merit in Astrophysics studies and with the Academia dei Lincei Fellowship, for outstanding Italian students in Physics.
Scarpetta wrote a high number of articles on science and space for the general public and participated to events and TEDx talks on the Universe, as strong believer in the power of inspiration and transformation that science can have on people and in particular on the young generations.