The Visual Agency is a data and information design agency specialized in communicating complexity and visualizing data.

Paolo is a manager and entrepreneur with over 30 years of professional experience in technology and marketing. He has built his professional career in large international corporations such as Telecom Italia, Microsoft and WPP as well as an independent entrepreneur.

He started his professional path as a software developer while studying at Bocconi Business School. He kick-started his career at Microsoft Italy, where he had the opportunity to develop his management and marketing skills in this leading multinational company. As senior marketing manager, he was responsible for a large team of marketing and communication professionals and he managed the Italian subsidiary marketing budget.
Moving from Microsoft to WPP, he had the chance to see the communication world from an agency point of view. With Digital PR, he launched his first startup as CEO focusing on a very niche market (at that time): Public Relations on the Internet.
His final destination so far is The Visual Agency, which marks another change in his professional career. He started the company as an independent entrepreneur. He believes data visualization is a fusion of technology, marketing and design, and therefore the perfect combination of his professional competencies.

Paolo is Professor of Design at the Northeastern University in Boston where he founded and currently directs the Center for Design. He joined Northeastern after 20+ years at Politecnico di Milano where he coordinated the Communication Design program (BSc and MSc), has been member of the board at the PhD in Design and founded the DensityDesign Research Lab - an award-winning laboratory for data visualization and information design. Paolo’s research focuses on the design transformations that help to make sense of data and information to improve decision making processes in all kinds of organizations. He works especially to engage non-experts stakeholders with controversial complex social issues where he’s also experimenting on the role of rhetorics, sonification and embodiment for a deeper engagement.

Journalist, writer and communication professional with 30 years of experience.

From 2015 to 2020, Marco has been Communications Director at ENI. As Executive Vice President, he was in charge of external communications, digital strategy, data analytics and reputation management in the Italian-based energy company, which is active in 60 countries with about 34,000 employees.  

Before joining ENI in 2015, he was Managing Editor and Digital Editor at La Stampa, a leading European newspaper based in Turin, Italy.  

Marco was U.S. Correspondent for the Italian news agency ANSA. He has covered the 2000 Bush-Gore electoral race for the White House the first international Al Qaeda trial in Manhattan the September 11, 2001 attack on America the war in Afghanistan the war in Iraq the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. 

Marco is Visiting Fellow at University of Oxford - Said Business School. He teaches a class on "Journalism innovation and new business models" at Master on Journalism, ALMED-Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. 

In 2021, Marco Bardazzi founded Bea - Be a Media Company, a strategic communication agency based in Milan, Italy.

Stefano is an executive with 25+ years building and leading B2B and B2C teams in High Tech, Internet and Media industries in Italy, the UK and across the EMEA region. He held executive positions at top multinational organizations such as Google (Italy Country Director), Microsoft (MSN Italy Country Manager), Condé Nast (CondéNet International President), and GoDaddy (Vice President Europe, Middle East and Africa). He is driven by passion for technology, entrepreneurial spirit, media expertise, and building highly effective teams.

He is a book author, professional journalist, and technologist. He combines business expertise with uncommon communication skills, strong reputation and a winning track record in the industry.

Francesco is an entrepreneur developing strategies for business development for different organizations. Furthermore, he supports clients' corporate communication campaigns/initiatives with a specific focus on top-level advisory and opinion-makers relations.

His expertise is to create and manage top-level relations with academic representatives, opinion and decision-makers and journalists/columnists. He gained an in-depth understanding of the communication industry as a whole, on both sides: the agency/consultancy side, in a very international environment, and in-house within one of the major Italian Blue Chip companies.
With almost 20 years of expertise, he has developed a strong know-how in all the communication segments: external relations initiatives, traditional and social media relations, top institutional relations, event management, strategic and corporate communication projects, international and complex team management.

The long period of time spent in one of the most relevant and reputed international consultancy firms (Hill & Knowlton/WPP Group), allowed him to enrich his professional skills with business development and complex budget management capabilities. At Telecom Italia he has held the position of Head of Opinion Makers relations supporting the Group’s Chairman on all communicational matters.

Since 2013, Tommaso has been working as Account Executive in TheVisualAgency. In 2014 Tommaso founded TOMMI, an information design cluster with a focus on Data and Visual Journalism. TOMMI’s projects have been internationally awarded and published by the newspapers Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, Courrier International and the renown Scuola Holden for Communications and Storytelling.
In 2016, Tommaso launched Visualeyed, an online magazine focused on new trends in data and visual journalism which gathers best-in-class examples from main international newsrooms and produces its own data journalism articles. Tommaso is a guest lecturer at the Digital Communication master and Journalism Master at the Catholic University of Milan. In November 2018, Tommaso founded DALK, a data-driven journalism agency based in Milan which focuses on finding, analyzing and translating data into stories.