5 Questions for Andrea, the New CEO of Run2AI

Andrea, what path brought you here?

Right after university, I worked for eight years in strategic consulting at McKinsey, primarily serving clients in the financial sector. However, a wonderful project in the health insurance space opened my eyes to a complex industry with enormous room for improvement through digital technology.

That's where the desire to "get my hands dirty" was born — to try and make a difference by launching a startup with a clear goal: making healthcare services more accessible through technology. I remember that when we started in 2021, we were still in the middle of the pandemic, and yet almost no one offered the option of a video consultation.
It was an intensive learning experience that taught me how difficult it is to innovate in a sector with very specific rules, needs, and competing interests.

What did that founder experience leave you with?

A great deal. First and foremost, the awareness that innovating in healthcare requires as much pragmatism as it does passion. We launched services that were new to Italy — like real-time chat with a doctor for employees of our client companies — and we also found ourselves managing initiatives we hadn't planned for, such as the free psychological support project for Italian citizens of Ukrainian origin, who often had family members in areas hit by bombings. Within days, we had gathered hundreds of sign-ups from volunteer psychologists across Italy: it was a moving response, and one of the most meaningful moments of that journey.
These are experiences that remind you why you're doing all of this: behind every line of code, there are real needs.

I remember that we had developed a responsive web app with a target audience of 30-to-40-year-olds in mind. The first person to purchase a psychological consultation? A lovely lady in her seventies, who couldn't enter the video chat because her daughter had set her browser to "Very large fonts," and as a result the button to join the call ended up off-screen.
Small things, but they teach you — mistake after mistake — to never take anything for granted.

And after the startup?

I worked on a very stimulating project focused on Data Protection for Generative AI — another rapidly evolving field.

But when I had the opportunity to return to the frontier of healthcare innovation, alongside two people like Luca Foresti and Giuseppe Faraci, the temptation was too strong to resist.

Why healthcare specifically?

Because it's an enormous ecosystem, with an almost infinite number of micro-problems just waiting for the right insight. Sometimes all it takes is a "spark" — a simple idea, applied in the right place — to improve someone's life. And it's also a growing sector that concerns and will increasingly concern all of us, yet at the same time it's burdened by inevitable demographic trends.

And precisely because it's so complex, it's also so fascinating: if it were easy, everything would already be "done." But here the difficulty is real: the fragmentation of management systems, the regional healthcare system that makes every context different from the next, very specific regulations, and the need to speak simultaneously to very different users — in terms of skills, age, and expectations.

It's a challenge, yes. But it's also an enormous space of opportunity.

And today, as CEO of Run2AI, what excites you the most?

The possibility of building something with a tangible impact. Run2AI has the right "DNA": technology, pragmatism, and a clear mission.

We don't talk about AI in the abstract: we work every day to bring it where it can truly make a difference — in departments, in reception offices, in the hands of those who manage and provide care. In the morning we have an idea, and by the afternoon we might already have a working prototype built in our spare moments.

It's a role that gives me energy, and leading it alongside such a skilled and motivated team is a privilege I feel every day.

Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on LinkedIn!