A New Story
I ran a $40-billion capital program for an Oil & Gas major.
Now I help senior professionals re-author the next chapter of their lives, with more rigor and a lot less fiction than the motivational industry sells.
The reassuring credentials you are probably looking for are at the end of this page. But that is only part of my story and possibly, not the most important one. So let me start with another story.
It began east of the Iron Curtain
It’s early 2013. I am stationed east of the former Iron Curtain, midway through my fifteenth year in Oil & Gas, where my days are spent steering multi-billion-dollar capital portfolios and translating volatile barrel prices into board-level decisions across four continents.
In those final months, the center of gravity began to shift. The company was entering acquisition talks with the Russian national oil company, an outcome that, while lucrative, felt increasingly misaligned with my values and the kind of work I wanted to do. Days were still claimed by investment committees, strategy decks for the Board, and capital-allocation briefings, but evenings belonged to a different ledger: impromptu coaching sessions with junior executives uneasy about the transition ahead.
Their questions had little to do with Brent forecasts or FX exposure, and everything to do with succession anxiety, stalled ambition, and the growing sense that their professional narratives no longer matched the facts of their lives. In those conversations, I discovered a different kind of leverage, guiding leaders, not balance sheets, navigate volatility. By the time I boarded the flight home that November, an executive coaching and leadership development vocation had taken root.
Over the following year, I alternated between selective consulting mandates and disciplined work on my executive coaching repertoire, partnering with leaders facing the same disorienting transitions I had just lived through. Other C-suite opportunities emerged, but each offer faltered at the final calculation: the numbers added up, the story did not. And then, once again, everything changed.
That’s What I Want to Do
“That’s what I want to do!” My wife Heli heard me utter those words not fully realizing what I had just said. On the large TV screen the credits started running.
I had just finished watching “Buck”, a richly textured documentary on the story of one of the most remarkable horsemen in America, Buck Brannaman. I was transfixed. I had never seen anything like this. The grace, the elegance and the power of the horse were perfectly matched by Buck’s legendary “feel” for these extraordinary creatures. All I could think was “I want some of that”.
There was only a minor problem with my plan. I was a 44 year old Business Executive who did not know how to ride. Not in the sense that I was not good at it, but in the sense that I had never taken a lesson, not one. I had been on a pony a couple of times as a child, and on two trail rides as an adult, but that was it. Hardly the stuff of legends. I’ve always liked horses, but until then it had been a platonic, unrealized passion.
Then, one day, without thinking about it too much, I started calling all of the ranches featured in the documentary to see who would be brave enough to take me as a student.
After a couple of months I flew across the ocean and arrived in Montana. Within 3 weeks I was hooked. Under the very patient guidance of extraordinary teachers I started to learn the basics of horsemanship. In the fall of 2015 I drove 5,000 miles around “the last best place” in my friend Jacques’ old pickup truck to find a ranchy old corner where to settle down.
In 2016, having fully transitioned out of my corporate career into executive and transformational coaching, Heli & I moved from Europe to the historical town of Livingston, where we lived for 6 years with 7 horses and 3 giant dogs.
A New Direction
The questions that drive a career and the ones that redefine a life aren’t as separate as they seem.
As my executive coaching practice evolved, I refined my focus on narrative frameworks and systemic approaches to change. Along the way, I explored experiential methods — most notably equine-based leadership development — to keep transformation grounded in lived experience rather than abstraction.
Two insights became defining. First, my vocation lies in guiding senior leaders to confront the tension between the stories that made them and the futures they now need to author. Second, outside the boardroom and in the saddle, I discovered reined cow horse, a discipline where precision, clarity, and presence decide the outcome. The same attunement that governs a horse’s response under pressure mirrors what leadership demands in complex, volatile, high-stakes environments.
Over time, these domains converged. The principles of horsemanship — timing, coherence, and non-verbal communication — proved remarkably effective when translated into executive coaching contexts. A horse’s sensitivity to intention and emotional congruence becomes a live mirror for the dynamics of authority, trust, and relational leadership. Within that silent dialogue, leaders learn to hold pressure without collapse and to act decisively without aggression — skills at the core of transformational leadership.
The Artha Ranch
In 2022 we moved near Weatherford, TX and created a unique coaching venue — The Artha Ranch — integrating reflective coaching retreats with a working horse ranch and keeping transformation grounded in the discipline and grit of daily life.
Today FM Transformational Coaching centers on leaders navigating high-stakes transitions and midlife transformations, when the old narrative strains under new realities.
Rooted in narrative theory, neuroscience, and contemporary psychoanalytic thought, the practice helps individuals and organizations interpret context, act with coherence, and translate insight into meaningful, sustained results.
Professional Credentials & Global Experience
I am a certified Executive and certified Transformational coach. I am also a licensed, specialty-certified New Life Story® Wellness coach, and a licensed, specialty-certified independent assessor for both HOGAN® Personality & Executive Assessments and LEAD NOW! Executive Self-Assessment and 360 Assessment. Finally, I am also a certified EQUUS® coach and I am specialized in Peak Performance training and Brain science. I am a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and abide by its Code of Ethics.
Originally from Rome, Italy, I have an undergraduate degree in Political Science and completed my post graduate and executive education in International Economics, International Relations, Finance and Leadership development.
I have also been an academic and a journalist, a competitive tennis player and a national reserve champion kickboxer, a nightlife promoter, a serial entrepreneur, a mentor and a mentee, a corporate trainer and a coaching client, a coffee shop owner and a ranch hand. In the last 30 years, I have studied, worked and lived in 6 countries, travelled to over 50 countries, learned (and then forgot) a few languages.
As an Author, I wrote a couple of books, created online courses, taught live (Financial) Decision Making to over 1000 people.
These days my free time alternates between saddle time on the ranch and writing about leadership and change. The horses keep me honest (and busy); the writing keeps me sharp.