Building Bridges, Shaping the Future, Challenging Limits: Giada and Anna’s Vision of Entrepreneurship

Successful entrepreneurs, drivers of cultural integration, community builders and thoughtful advocates of the responsibility to give back to society some of the opportunities they have received. Anna Fiscale and Giada Zhang have followed different paths: the former is the founder of the Progetto Quid social cooperative, while the latter is an innovator and CEO of the Mulan Group. Yet they share many views, as well as an educational journey that included Bocconi’s classrooms. Now, they are being recognized by the Bocconi Alumni Community: Anna as Alumna Changemaker and Giada as Alumna Emerging Leader. Both awards will be presented on October 18, during the ceremony that will also honor the 2026 Bocconi Alumnus of the Year.

If you had to describe yourselves as entrepreneurs in one word, what would it be?

Giada Zhang: Builder. Of businesses, but also of bridges between cultures, people and markets. To me, entrepreneurship means turning an idea into something real, solid and capable of lasting beyond the person who founded it.

Anna Fiscale: Alternative - because I try to see limitations as starting points. Where others see difficulties, I try to identify potential value. Everyone at Quid is a resource who deserves a new opportunity.

Your businesses stand out for their social value. Is this aspect sufficiently recognized today?

Zhang: It is discussed a great deal, but often as though it were a separate chapter. To me, impact is the way a business is run: who grows alongside you, what opportunities you create and how you treat people, customers and the supply chain. Unless it becomes part of everyday decision-making, it remains merely a matter of communication.

Fiscale: One positive development I have noticed is that many companies, as they draw up their development plans for 2030, are aware that they have done a great deal on the environmental front but still need to catch up on social impact. They are now asking themselves questions about human rights, ethical supply chains, diversity and inclusion.

Why is simply making a profit no longer enough for a company today?

Zhang: Profit is the oxygen of a business, not its ultimate purpose. It enables a company to endure, invest and make independent choices. But a company that grows by consuming people, trust or resources creates value only on paper.

Fiscale: Because, in the absence of the community dynamics once represented by certain traditional institutions, companies today are being called upon to play a more central social role. Their impact is increasingly important, and they must become more active within their communities.

What was the most difficult decision you made in order to remain true to these values?

Zhang: Slowing down when Mulan was growing faster than its structure could support. Saying no to immediate opportunities in order to invest in quality, processes and people. It is difficult to give up revenue today to build a better company tomorrow.

Fiscale: After the Covid pandemic, we went through a difficult period, and I decided to close our physical stores in order to focus on our relationships with companies and on the B2B channel. It was a very painful decision, one that was not fully supported by the entire board of directors, and it made me experience the full loneliness of being an entrepreneur.

When did you realize that the success of your businesses was changing people’s lives?

Zhang: When Mulan stopped being just my company and became part of other people’s future: families who depended on that work, people who were growing professionally and a cuisine once perceived as “ethnic” becoming part of everyday life in Italy. That was when I realized we were also building integration.

Fiscale: I see it every day in the 180 people who work with us, each of whom has a story of rebirth and redemption. In particular, I think of the people who work while in prison and who, once they have served their sentence, continue working in our workshops. That transition is crucial in preventing reoffending.

How do you experience the responsibility to “give back” to society what you have received?

Zhang: I do not see it as an occasional act of giving back, but as a way of multiplying opportunities. I had access to education, encounters and environments that broadened my horizons. Today, I feel a responsibility to open doors, especially for those who lack social capital or role models in whom they can see themselves.

Fiscale: It is part of my company’s DNA, but also of my personal story. Quid was born also from a personal wound that I was able to heal and transform into an opening through which light could pass. In this way, I flourished again and was able to help women who had suffered much deeper wounds than mine to flourish as well. My own empowerment journey became a tool for empowering others.

Is there a milestone that would make you feel you had truly “made it” as entrepreneurs?

Zhang: I will feel I have made it when Mulan no longer needs me in order to function, but continues to identify with the values on which we built it. The goal is not to be indispensable: it is to create a company that produces new leaders and opportunities beyond its founder.

Fiscale: I do not think an entrepreneur ever feels they have truly arrived. In my case, Progetto Quid’s impact can always become broader. By 2030, for example, we aim to build a nationwide network with other social tailoring businesses across Italy that employ vulnerable people in their local communities.

What quality do you most often look for in the people you work with?

Zhang: Ownership: not merely solving a problem once it has been assigned, but noticing that the problem exists in the first place. I look for people who feel responsible for the outcome, not just for their own task. Skills can be learned; this kind of care is much rarer.

Fiscale: I like people who can find solutions and new perspectives by thinking outside the box. What really frustrates me, by contrast, is when the first reaction is, “It can’t be done” or “It has never been done before.” At the beginning, everyone said the same things to me: you will never succeed, no one has ever done this before.

Have you ever been underestimated because you are women? How did you react?

Zhang: Yes, because I was young, a woman and of Chinese origin. At first, I tried to correct other people’s perceptions immediately. Today, I no longer waste energy trying to convince them. I let the results make their initial judgment irrelevant.

Fiscale: To be honest, I have never felt that other people particularly distrusted me because I was a woman. In my experience, being young has always been more of a disadvantage. Of course, the combination of the two certainly does not help.

If you could launch a new project with your fellow interviewee, what would it be?

Zhang: Together with Anna, I would create a replicable model to help women return to work after leaving the labor market because of motherhood, personal vulnerability or migration. It would combine training, food production workshops and retail. Not welfare, but a business capable of transforming invisible talent into economic independence.

Fiscale: With Giada, I could imagine opening a restaurant or retail outlet that combines healthy, high-quality Asian food with employment opportunities for people who have experienced vulnerability. We could easily bring our respective expertise together, including in the food retail sector.

Is there a lesson you learned at Bocconi that still influences your decisions today?

Zhang: Rigor. Bocconi taught me that ambition and discipline must go hand in hand. Intuition opens a path, but numbers, scenarios and difficult questions tell you whether that path can hold up.

Fiscale: Valuing everyone’s contribution. I remember that, as students, our comments in class were taken very seriously. It is an environment that helps people bring out the best in themselves.

One word you associate with Bocconi today.

Zhang: Horizon. Because it allowed me to see possibilities that, in the environment I came from, I did not yet know I could imagine.

Fiscale: Fertile ground. Because it is like a rich soil, full of different stimuli and capable of generating new perspectives.

One person you are grateful to?

Zhang: My parents. As immigrants, they built their lives quietly, without ever calling it a sacrifice. They taught me that work is dignity, and that integration does not mean erasing your origins, but turning them into value.

Fiscale: The first person who comes to mind is my partner, Daniele, who supports me and puts up with me.

What advice would you give your twenty-year-old selves?

Zhang: Do not confuse independence with loneliness. You do not have to prove everything immediately or become so strong that you no longer need anyone. Choose the right people, ask for help before you reach your limit and build systems that do not depend solely on you.

Fiscale: Do not devote so much energy to worrying about what other people say about you and your project. Do not allow that to restrict your freedom to make mistakes and to approach reality with your own ideas.

And what do you hope your future selves will find changed compared with today?

Zhang: I hope female leadership will no longer be portrayed as a heroic exception. I would like to see a wider range of role models, a fairer sharing of caregiving responsibilities and fewer women forced to prove that they deserve the positions they hold while silently carrying the entire burden.

Fiscale: I hope there will be greater support from institutions, as well as more training and guidance to help people navigate all the bureaucracy involved in starting a business.