Amelia Rosaria Cuomo

CEO @ Pasta Cuomo

Speaking Sessions

Biography

Amelia Cuomo, born in Vico Equense on 7/19/1982, is the owner of Pasta Cuomo, a two-hundred-year-old historic company in Gragnano.

After 15 years of living in Rome, 5 of which in university at the faculty of Economics at Luiss Guido Carli, 5 in auditing at Kpmg spa and 5 in Risk Management consulting at EY spa during which she qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Auditor, in 2015 she decided to realise her father Mariano’s dream of reactivating the family’s pasta factory of the same name, which had been closed for 70 years.

Therefore, in July 2015, together with her brother Alfonso, she decided to return to her homeland, Gragnano, and restart the pasta business by reactivating the Pasta Cuomo company that had existed since 1820.

After getting the production back on its feet, she soon realised that in order to make a difference, it was necessary to diversify into activities that were collateral to the agri-food industry but nevertheless connected to it, and he found this key in tourist-cultural activities with pasta always at the centre. She decided that the time had come to invest in the historical reconstruction of the family, realising from the outset that this could be the distinctive key to the success of her business. This would have allowed her to have her company recognised as the oldest existing one in the world. And so it was. In 2015, the Cuomo pasta factory in Via Roma started up again, and in 2016, Prof. Silvio de Majo was commissioned to conduct a historical research of the family documents in all the historical archives in Italy. The research results in 2020 in the book ‘UNA FAMIGLIA, UN PASTIFICIO: 200 ANNI DI MACCHERONI CUOMO A GRAGNANO’, a scientific text deposited in the libraries of Italy. In 2017, the small typical restaurant ‘Pastificio Cuomo’ was inaugurated, a place with traditional and seasonal zero-kilometre preparations with the support of the property’s vegetable garden. In 2019 she inaugurates the thematic rooms on pasta and women in his BNB Pasta Cuomo, and in 2020 it is the turn of the Historical and Technological Museum that recounts the 200 years of the Cuomo family both through the exhibition of the machinery of the old mill and pasta factory and through the virtual reconstruction of the old factory, whose story is told by the avatar of the ancestor Nicolino Cuomo to whom Mariano Cuomo gives the voice. Simultaneously with the launch of the museum, an application ‘Discover Pasta Cuomo’ is being launched, allowing the museum to be visited remotely.

For this innovative and unique business model, Amelia Cuomo in 2020 won the Giuliana Bertin Communication Award for having been able to tell and communicate its business innovation on on and offline channels, “thanks to the extraordinary ability to enhance the heritage and identity of the only one of the oldest pasta-making families in Gragnano still active, using an innovative mix of history, technology, circular economy and promotion of the territory, to tell the story of pasta from different perspectives”.

2021 is the year of sustainability and the drawing up of the social balance sheet with reference to the approach aimed at creating a sustainable micro-economy by purchasing from local producers, hiring local staff and producing with eco-sustainable and totally recyclable packs, holding cooking courses held by local elderly people, encouraging social inclusion and against school drop-out of children and young people. Lastly, in 2022, Amelia strongly advocated the purchase of 50 trees in Amazonia in order to obtain carbon-free certification for the group of companies based in Gragnano, as well as being invested with the role of Ambassador of Gammadonna for the two-year period 2022-2024.