Danilo Iervolino, President of the Università Telematica Pegaso
At the age of thirty-eight years old, he is the youngest European at the head of a University. However, he likes to point out that Unipegaso, an online University with nearly 60 locations throughout Italy, established in 2006, had already been conceived in 2004, when he was twenty years old. The idea came to him after a long stay in America, during which he was able to deepen the model of telematic training, technology platforms and distribution networks. As far back as fifteen years ago, in fact, in the United States the models of online training were acquiring an increasing significance. Back in Italy, he developed the project that later would lead to the birth of Università Telematica Pegaso, accredited by the Ministry in 2006. He had some enemies though: all forms of reluctancy and any forms of resistance to technology, especially towards the Web.
“Knowledge – he says – must reach everyone and online training cuts across all barriers of time and place”. Today Pegaso is the first telematic University in Italy, with 10 degree programmes, about 60 examination centers throughout Italy, more than 200 courses between masters and advanced classes, and 30 thousand students.
Creator of a new training method based on the conjugation between formal and informal learning, Danilo Iervolino – starting from the ethical and democratic principle that considers knowledge as a key resource of all and for all – managed to shape his Pegaso turning it into a University able to communicate with all the main productive forces of the country, of which he supervises training through masters and refresher courses.
And that’s not all: Iervolino is turning innovation and training into a kind of mission to which he dedicates every business action he takes. Hence the idea of ​​the first book published a year ago by Mondadori with the title “Now! Strategies to address the new frontiers of the web”, and his latest book (published by Giapeto, July 2016) ” Just press start-up – from the idea to the company”, a cross between an operating manual and a journey through the stories of who made it.
As president of the University, he holds various institutional offices: he is on the Steering Committee of Aprom, Association for the progress of the Mezzogiorno; he is a founding member of Certipass, the only body providing international digital skills certification programs EIPASS, distributed in the Community territory; he is an adviser for Svimez; he is part of the council of Confindustria Campania.
He is also President of Unimercatorum, telematic University of Chambers of Commerce, with whom he made the first public-private partnership in the context of the academic training, with the aim of turning it into the first Start Up Italian University. His new challenge is, in fact, the ‘Startup academy-Lab46 “, aimed at talented people selected by numerus clausus and integrated with an incubator for innovative businesses.
