Piero Piccardi
WTCA Board Member
Chair, Committee on Services for Trade Fairs, Trade Marts and High Tech Parks

Professor Piero Piccardi is internationally known as a leading figure in world trade.

Piero Piccardi is also member of the Board and Chairman of the permanent Committee on trade fairs and trade marts of WTCA, the World Trade Centers Association of New York. He has been involved for more than 30 years in international trade, as one of the top managers of a leading international trading group, active in more than 50 different Countries. As such, he is a former member of the advisory Committee concerned with commerce and distribution of the European Union.

Before that, Professor Piero Piccardi had worked ten years long in the banking and financial sectors.

As part of his contribution to the public services sector. Professor Piccardi has served 12 years long as Vice President, and member of the board of the Ente Fiera Milano, the Italian State Agency which owns and operates the biggest Trade fairs facilities in Europe.

From 1979 to 1994, he has been also member of the board of I.C.E, known as the Italian Trade Commission, the State Agency, which is responsible for the promotion of Italian exports.

Professor Piero Piccardi has extensively cooperated with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Trade on matters related to International trade, and was one of the members of the special committee established by the Italian Parliament, with the task of pinpointing all unnecessary costs, and to propose amendments to the current legislation, in the fields that effect international trade.

Between 1984 and 1997, he was also President of ANCE, the Italian National Association for International Trading companies and President of CITHA, the Confederation of the International Trading Houses Associations, representing 12 different European Countries.

Under the sponsorship of EEC, CITHA, ANCE and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Trade, Prof. Piccardi organized during the year 1989 the historic first Marco Polo World Convention of Trading Companies, that was attended by close to 700 delegates from 43 different Countries. The event was repeated in 1991 with even bigger success. In his service inside the Italian Trade Associations, he is a former member of the Executive Board and former President of the Committee for International Trade of Confcommercio, an Italian Trade Association which represents close to 1 million businesses on matters of commerce, tourism and services.

In 1994, Professor Piero Piccardi was called in the Board of the Italian Chapter of the International Chamber of Commerce, where he was serving as Chairman of the Committee for the promotion and for the regulations on international trade.

Piero Piccardi has accrued a significant experience in the publishing and printing industry too, as Senior Vice President and CEO of Casa Editrice Universo and as Member of the Board of EDISPORT.

As a certified professional journalist, he has been the editor in chief of the weekly newsletter "Informazioni per il commercio estero", and is a correspondent and a regular contributor to several Italian and United States periodicals.

Presently, prof. Piccardi is teaching "International Marketing" at the Faculty on Economics and Commerce in the University of Trieste.

Piero Piccardi was born in Florence, Italy, in 1936, has an University degree in Economics and Commerce, and a good command of the English, the German and the Spanish languages, in addition to his native Italian.