LOCATION: London, UK
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English, Italianand Russian
CURRENT ROLES:
Chair and CEO, Kyriba
Member of The Supervisory Board, Porsche AG
Non Executive Director, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Co-founder, Inner Wings
Non-Executive Director, J.P. Morgan Europe
PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP ROLES:
CEO, SUSE
COO, Digital Core SAP
Area Vice President, Salesforce
BOARDWAVE ROLES: Patron & Mentor
Melissa Di Donato is proud of being the first woman to list a billion-euro software company on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, but admits that had she told her 20-year-old self that she would become a CEO, she wouldn’t have believed it. “Never in a million years would I have said I could do that,” she says. Today, the businesswoman is the chair and CEO of global fintech firm Kyriba.
Back when Di Donato was in her 20s, though, she envisioned a career in public service. “I wanted to make the world a better place. I didn’t really know how but I thought the best way of serving people and making the world better was going into government and politics.”
Di Donato, who grew up in the New York Bronx, went onto study for an MBA in Russian language and literature at Washington DC’s American University. It was an establishment that she purposefully chose for its location at the heart of the US government. But having also received an MBA in international business, she soon realised that a career in government may not pay off her student loans. “My first mentor, the dean of the business school, said that SAP Software seemed to be really catching on and paying a lot of money to young people tobe engineers.” And so that’s what Di Donato did, and shortly afterwards she began a career in software.
On the money
If there is a theme that runs through Di Donato’s life choices, it is money – and, more specifically, the lack of it. “My mum and dad got divorced when I was really young and he leftus with nothing. We went to live with my grandmother. My clothes came from Kmart or the Salvation Army,” she says. “We got bread, milk, and cheese from the town hall.” Her family’s financial situation was not something that she thought about at the time, and she
says she never felt particularly disadvantaged, other than when she was waiting in line at school to hand over a coupon for lunch.
“I think I was probably very fortunate to grow up underprivileged because it made me who I am today,” she says.
“I never questioned whether I worked or didn’t work. I never questioned if I could fight, because I always was a fighter.”And now, as a mother to three far more privileged children, she wonders if their lives will be differently shaped. “I’ve often questioned if I am doing them a huge disservice by putting them in such a privileged position, rather than raising grafters.”
Di Donato is a hard worker. Between 1998 and 2008, she held roles at Bearing Point, Oracle, PwC, and IBM. But it was while she was at Salesforce, working as the most senior female executive outside the US, that financial hardship struck again.
“My daughter, Francesca, was born in January 2014, and in October 2015 my husband died very suddenly.” To add to the shock and grief of her unexpected loss, Di Donato realised that her husband had “left me completely broke”. “I had nothing. I’d lost all my life savings,” she says. “I had £7,000 in my bank account. I was living in Kensington
and my rent was £18,500 a month – and I had no way of paying it.” She was lent some money by a business associate and friend, but made the decision that she had to turbo-charge her career.
“I made a choice right there and then. I can either pack it in and go back to New York, where I hadn’t lived for 10 years, or walk into Salesforce and say to Marc Benioff and the executive team that I’m here to be the next CEO,” she says.
“I didn’t say CEO because I still didn’t think I could ever be a CEO,” she admits, “but I walked in and said I’ve got big ambitions. My life is on the line, my daughter’s life is on the line.” And from that moment on, her career took off. “I started doubling my income, I made investments, I would do advising for boards. I paid back all my debt, I paid off the debt my deceased husband had left me with. I went on to do amazing things,” she says. “Had I not been poor twice, had I not had a dead husband and a newborn baby, I would not be a CEO today.”
Shattering the glass ceiling
If Di Donato were to give advice to other women about their future, it would be this: “Don’t wait until there is tragedy in your life to be the best version of yourself. And don’t have imposter syndrome. Don’t make your goals too low. Lift the weights that are too heavy because eventually you will become strong enough.” Imposter syndrome is something many successful women talk about having, and Di Donato is no exception.
While she got used to being the only woman in the room, she didn’t get used to the whispers about how she got there. “Am I too nice? Are my heels too high? Too much makeup? Maybe I got here because of the way I look. That has always been at the back of my mind,” she says. “I spent the vast majority of my career in a business setting toning down the way I looked. I had to wear skirts because that’s what women wore, all blue and black pinstripes and buttoned-up white tops and pantyhose. I freaking hate pantyhose.”
But now, she’s abandoned the corporate uniform (and the pantyhose). She makes no apology for the way she looks. “I am at a point in my life, and have been for 10 years now, where I said I’m going to actually just be myself. I’ve made a conscious decision to get up every day and be who I am, rather than pretending to be someone I’m not.” Authenticity is something she is passionate about for all women, as is being an advocate and mentor to other females in the tech industry.
“We still have more Andrews and Simons in the UK top 100 companies than we have females,” she says.
“I want more women in the room, purely to have diversity of thought. It is for the betterment of our companies and our communities that we have people who don’t all look the same in the room.”
Her charity, Inner Wings, is focused on solving the pipeline problem: there is a shortage of female applicants for tech jobs because girls tend to abandon STEM subjects. The key to changing this will be “more role models, more women telling their stories”, Di Donato says.
For many, listing SUSE on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange would be regarded as a huge achievement but Di Donato actually regards it as one of her biggest failures. “I shouldn’t have listed SUSE. I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice. It was the wrong thing to do at the wrong time,” she says. “It was a very successful IPO all the way through January and February of 2022 and then, with the economy and everything else, the share prices started to go down,” Di Donato says. “I didn’t enjoy being the CEO of a German-listed company. No one understood our tech, no one understood infrastructure. No matter what we did, the share price was still hampered because we were in the tech basket and tech was going down.”
It is another reason why she is a passionate advocate for the European software industry, something she champions in her role as Patron at Boardwave.
Now the CEO at cloud-based finance solutions provider Kyriba, Di Donato says the job suits her much better. “The firm operates like a start-up. It gives me a good opportunity to do what I’m good at – which is operational and commercial excellence,” she says. The people are amazing, the culture is awesome, the customers love the product.”
Di Donato has big ambitions for the firm: she wants to double the value of the business by 2025. However, she says that she likes to do things in threes, and feels that there will be one more CEO role for her at some point in the future. Not bad for a girl from the Bronx who never imagined rising to the top.
Top Tips From The Top
What are your tips for a successful business?
1. Be flexible.
2. There is no such thing as a career ladder, it’s a New York fire escape.
3. Believe in yourself. You are so much more capable than you think you are.
What is the best advice you’ve been given?The best advice I was given was to “Get a mentor and try SAP Software – it seems to be catching on”.
Can you tell us something surprising about yourself?
I have tattoos and I’ve raced motorcycles.
If you hadn’t become an entrepreneur, what career would you have pursued?
A politician.
Is there a piece of tech, other than your phone, that you could not live without?ChatGPT.
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