When a chairman starts his role, I think he should firstly express two feelings: memory and gratitude. Memory for the previous experiences he made before being in charge and gratitude for the trust other people are committing to him. So if I may I will share such feelings with you.

From a personal point of view, my memories bring me to the extraordinary history of having founded Pragma and having accompanied its life from then until now, memories of the people and professionals known during such a long period, in particular for the ones who are no more with us but who are in our hearts such as Cecilia Caria Mendes, Yvette Alizer and maybe others for whom we lost the connections with, but my memories also are for all the others that are not in Pragma anymore but were for a long or a short time part of the project. 

To be successful for everybody, I need your full trust in a role that is not always easy and for this reason I would like to thank all the members (present here in Bologna and not) for giving me your precious faith.

In this regard, I would like to give a special thank to Jean Francois Coulon, the first president of Pragma, to have involved me and the Italians in this extraordinary work since the beginning; to Michel Lacroix, who I have been working with from the very first days of Pragma in writing the bye-laws during days and nights and who many times uses his great common sense to solve problems; and whilst thanking him I would also like to thank all of the French colleagues who are not here but were an important part of Pragma having allowed our network to live for many years supporting the budget and many other essential things; thanks to Carlos Manubens, and his strategic vision and work, in particular during these last two years but without forgetting the other twenty years of great joint collaboration; thanks to my Milan partners and Italian Interconsulting associates, here in numbers like the French once were, because without their support my work would be impossible; thanks to the past and current board directors, in particular Gustavo Cuevas and Stephanie Thomas, who have been known each other and been working together for a long time and I welcome the new member Matthew Epstein to the board.

This is what I want guarantee to all of you: I will work for Pragma and for you all in order to reach the targets of business development we have.

I did not forget our organization: I would like to thank Pol Santacana, Jose Salgado and Letizia Blini for their great work which allows me to affirm that the radical change observed and witnessed in the last two years, brought forward by Carlos Manubens in the main targets of Pragma and by me concerning the organization, were really successful on the one hand for the evident dynamic and vigorous activities and on the other hand for costs and expenses, that have not changed but are certainly better invested. And I would like to give my great thanks to all of the ambassadors because it was not easy for them to perceive the role and to be as active as they are in most of the practices.

Now go and spread the word about our Network. Talk with your colleges in Pragma, talk with the marketing team, get involved, share your knowledge and experience and benefit from the knowledge of your teammates. Last but not least, we all know that results will not come by tomorrow, however, if each and every one of us will think about Pragma once a day, imagine the force and the impact that 300 professionals could have when thinking about our Network in just a single day.

The Chairman
Gilberto Gelosa