Rita Laura D'Ecclesia

Rita Laura D'Ecclesia has been an independent director of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena S.p.A. since May 2020, where she also holds the position of Deputy Chairperson and member of the Risk and Sustainability Committee.

She holds a degree in Statistical and Demographic Sciences from the ‘Sapienza' University of Rome and a PhD in Business Economics from the University of Bergamo.

From 1993 to 1998, she was a University Researcher in Mathematical Methods in Economics and Actuarial and Financial Sciences at the University of Urbino; from 1998 to 2001 she was Associate Professor at the University of Foggia.
Since 2001 she has been a Professor at the Sapienza University of Rome in the Department of Statistical Sciences of the Faculty of Engineering, Information Engineering and Statistics. She teaches courses in Financial Mathematics, Risk Management and Asset Pricing as part of Bachelor, Master and PhD programs. 

She has experience of teaching Master’s degree courses at foreign institutions - Birkbeck University of London and Erasmus University- Rotterdam. Her scientific activity, documented in numerous publications, focuses on risk management, portfolio allocation, pricing of complex financial instruments, financial markets and commodity markets, profitability analysis of sustainable investments, use of Artificial Intelligence tools to study key LGD drivers. She is coordinator of the PhD program in Finance and Institutions at School of Social Economic Sciences at the Sapienza University of Rome and Chair of the Euro Working Group for Financial Modelling, an association of international academics in the field of Operational Research. She is a founding member of the Global Network of Executive Master’s in Financial Management (GEMFM), an international association for the training of experts in risk management. She is Associate editor of several scientific journals.

She has previous experience in the banking and financial sector and was an Independent Director at Igea Banca, where she was in charge of the Risk Appetite Framework, and at Banco BPM where she was a member of the Internal Control and Risk Committee.
She was an Independent Director and Chairperson of the Internal Control and Risk Committee of Anima Holding, as well as an Independent Director and member of the Nominations Committee and the Internal Control and Risk Committee of Anima SGR.
She currently serves as Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Lumen Ventures, a simple investment company with fixed capital shares.