Barbara de Siena
From France to Africa:
the journey behind the new UP2gether project
2025
Back in Italy
She co-founded, as Secretary, with 28 other members in District 2042, the Rotary Club Monza International – an international, fully online club. She was elected President for the 2026-27 Rotary year.
UP2gether is back to producing events – tailor-made, designed as architectures of leadership, relationship-building, and decision-making.
And my Italian-French bilingual background, along with Italian cuisine’s UNESCO recognition, reopens a powerful gateway to bring Francophone clients back to Italy – from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and Africa, among others.
2023
Since March 2022, UP2gether has relocated to the island of Fuerteventura, in the Spanish Canary Islands archipelago.
2021
The UP2gether project, conceived by Barbara de Siena, offers a range of digital services including the creation of the International Virtual Commercial Office and the Brand Ambassador for selling products abroad and for internationalization.
2020
Active online, including in Brussels since 2020, a pool of selected and highly qualified professionals to project companies and professionals into an international context. The work carried out over the years by the professionals collaborating on the project has made it possible to create a network specialized in internationalization services for SMEs in the Canary Islands, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and French-speaking countries in Africa.
2019
UP2gether organizes the Focus Senegal for BESI Bureau Economique du Sénégal en Italie (Embassy of Senegal), in collaboration with E4Impact, several Confindustria agencies, Africa e Affari, and some Lombardy-based trade associations such as AINM and the PMI Lombarde portal.
2014
UP2gether becomes responsible for the Italian Delegation of the First Africa SMB Forum in Casablanca, an international business meeting on connecting and financing SMEs for employment and inclusive growth in Africa, held in Casablanca in early 2014, and for supporting companies taking their first steps in these new emerging countries.
2009
Barbara de Siena accepts a mission for a French company in Senegal and discovers the charm and immense potential of the African continent. This marks the beginning of a collaboration with several organizations in Africa, including the DGPIP, General Directorate for the Promotion of Private Investments of Guinea-Bissau, which will lead her to prepare several accompaniment missions in sub-Saharan West Africa in the years that follow. This is how a journey begins that expands her professional horizons into a territory not yet deeply known by our companies.
BARBARA DE SIENA
An international journey full of experience and savoir-faire
Barbara de Siena, Italian by origin, moved to Paris as a teenager, she lived its culture and made her own the French and international mentality of the Ville Lumière. She studies in Paris and learns French and English. Distinct nationalities, religions, and ethnic groups lay the first foundations for the internationalization work that will trace her entire professional history
Very young, she began her career as a hostess and translator. Communication becomes her profession: she works in an agency that deals with sponsorships for major brands, such as Nestlé concentrated milk and Grana Padano (sponsor products of the Italian national gymnastics and mountain bikes) assisting the manager of the events in the organization and personnel management.
Since 1993 Barbara has been involved in promoting some companies in the graphic arts sector, consolidating significant experiences in customer management and working with the major world advertising agencies in Milan.
A few years later she set up an international sales office in Paris for five companies in the graphic arts sector (paper converting, rotary, flatbed, direct-marketing, shopper, gadgets).
In 2005 she also began working for other product sectors, expanding her direct experience to other types of products and promoting companies in Italy and France with the IncontriGusto and IncontriModa projects.
Barbara de Siena’s experience was forged from 1990 to 1996 where she simultaneously worked as a legal assistant where she learned to read and write international contracts and manage a legal office: organization and legal. With some companies you have learned to sell in various countries abroad and in Italy with different techniques, preparing price lists and sector studies in different product categories. Then the discovery of Africa … the rest is history.
EXPAND BOUNDARIES. ACTIVATE CONNECTIONS. CREATE OPPORTUNITIES.
Every connection we create is born from a clear vision, is fueled by trust, and turns into a real opportunity. That’s how we help businesses, territories, and people think bigger. And become Protagonists.
CALL ME OR BOOK
+39 351 4745286