Shini Somara: What was your path into aviation and aerospace?
Grazia Vittadini: My career path hasn’t quite followed a straight line, there were plenty of zigzags, but I have always loved aeroplanes, even as a child. Later on, I had a motorcycle, which I kept dismantling, rebuilding and optimising. I actually wanted to be a jet fighter pilot at that time, but the Italian Air Force didn’t allow women to fly. I applied nonetheless and, of course, was rejected. The unfairness of this prompted me to promise myself that if I couldn’t fly planes, then I was going to build them instead. That’s what brought me to aerospace engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, where I specialised in aerodynamics.
Subsequently, I followed the professional opportunities which presented themselves and, after two years in Italy working on the Eurofighter project, I left for Germany. Then between Germany and France, with teams in Spain, the UK, the United States, China, India...