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Milestones
The promoter and founder of the Association was Elisabetta Tamagnone, an executive of SAIMA, an international shipping company.
At the time of Alitalia’s inaugural flight, 1st April 1960, on the Italy-Netherlands route, Elisabetta Tamagnone meets in Amsterdam M.me Betsy Kiek Wolffers, President of the Dutch FCE - Femmes Chefs d'Enterprises, whose European founder and President was M.me Yvonne Edmond Foinant from Paris. Elisabetta Tamagnone, enthusiastic about the activities carried out by the FCE, gets the idea of founding a similar association in Italy. She begins a correspondence with M.me Foinant, gets in touch with the few women who then covered entrepreneurial or managerial roles in Turin. On 22 May 1961, the memorandum of association of AIDDA-Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Managers of Enterprises, is signed by:
Marian Taylor Abbagnano is elected President and Elisabetta Tamagnone Vice-President.
The founding members put together a statute whose purpose and goals have accompanied the life of the association ever since. In October of the same year, AIDDA organises its first conference: "The Evolution of Italian Women in Leading Roles" and already on that occasion the President Marian Taylor Abbagnano stated: "All women and particularly those in leading roles, can help to dissolve, edit or even delete, where necessary, the rigid schemes, properties and constrictive conservatism, obscurantism, fanaticism and intolerance, by taking a firm position having an awareness of their responsibilities in a society that increasingly needs their valuable contribution." The Association grew rapidly over the years and the Regional Delegations were born starting with Piedmont in 22 May 1961 to Calabria in 2003.
The Association grew rapidly over the years and the Regional Delegations were born starting with Piedmont in 22 May 1961 to Calabria in 2003.
The National Presidents from May 22 1961 until today have been 15, in chronological order:
from 2020 to date: Antonella Giachetti