Nicola Villa Senior Vice President y experto en Smart Cities. MasterCard.
Nicola is a Mastercard senior executive focused at the intersection between Digital Infrastructure, Economic Development and Sustainability. A corporate entrepreneur at heart, Nicola brings together Foresight, Innovation, Strategy and Execution to help leading Public Sector organizations across the world achieve their policy objectives.
Nicola is in charge of the government industry strategy and vertical markets initiatives at Mastercard, with a specific focus on Civic Infrastructures, Sustainable Tourism, Economic Development and Human Ventures, amongst others.
Prior to that, Nicola worked at Vice President and Executive Partner at IBM’s Global Business Services unit. In his role, Nicola collaborated with leading government agencies to develop Digital Platform programs. Strongly focused on urban innovation, he co-developed innovative strategies and solutions in the Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Big Data spaces to solve some of the key challenges public sector organizations face. He also led the Internet of Things business in Europe, across all industries.
Prior to joining IBM, Nicola worked for Cisco Systems for almost 20 years where he led e-Commerce programs in the 90’s, he incubated the global digital consulting unit, he set up Cisco’s first steps in the Smart Cities market and helped created a 1.2B$ business in this space. Nicola worked as member of Cisco China’s Board for a few years as well as led the company’s Data & Analytics services group at global level. In his final role at Cisco he partnered with the Chairman & CEO to develop multi-year digital partnership programs with the French, UK, German and Italian Prime Ministers.
Nicola is a Board member of the Internet of Things Global Solutions Forum in Barcelona, an Executive Member of the Board at the World Economic Forum’s Future of Urbanization program, a co-founder with the City of Barcelona of The City Protocol Society and of Metropolis’ “Partnership for Urban Innovation” commission
Amongst Main Publications:
Nicola’s work and blogs are extensively showcased at:
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/nicolavilla