A bridge whose left half is the Venetian Rialto and whose right half is the Sydney Harbour Bridge, meeting at a red keystone

The Italy and Australia leg of My Most Trusted,
a national and global super-community of

trusted connections in our Trusted Universe, October 2026

Italy · Australia

The Italy-Australia Business Bridge

ponte. In Italian, a bridge. It only stands if it is built on both banks.

Take a tour of the Italy-Australia Bridge Meet the hosts

What this is

The Italy-Australia Business Bridge exists for the people trading between Italy and Australia, and for the very large number of Australians whose surnames, recipes and second passports came from somewhere between Milan and Palermo.

Eight to ten hours of time difference is the thing everybody blames, and it is the smallest problem here. The real one is that a good firm in Melbourne and a good firm in Bologna have no way of hearing about each other, because the people who could introduce them have never been in the same room.

An introduction needs somebody on each shore

Knowing Italy is not the same as knowing who in Italy answers an email in August. Each end of this corridor has its own customs, its own pace and its own way of deciding you are worth meeting, so each end has its own host who lives there.

ItalyMilan

Alessio Rinaldo

Host, Italy · Pellegrini S.p.A.

Alessio Rinaldo hosts the Italian side of the Bridge from Milan. He runs banqueting at the PwC Tower with Pellegrini S.p.A., and is a member of the Associazione Italiana Sommelier. His working life sits where Italian business and Italian hospitality meet, which in Milan is where a great deal of business actually gets done, over a table rather than across one.

More about Alessio

AustraliaMelbourne

Vincenzo Alaia

Host, Australia

Vincenzo Alaia holds the Australian end of the Bridge, from Melbourne. He imports olive oil from Italy into Australia, so he knows from his own business what it takes to bring an Italian product to an Australian table, and how much depends on trusting the people at the other end. Alongside that, he leads a software engineering team at Domain. He meets people face to face in Melbourne and online anywhere.

More about Vincenzo

The way this one runs

Introductions are made by hand, or not at all.A host weighs whether two people should really meet, writes to both of them together, and says why. If it does not make sense, nothing is sent.
No lists are bought, sold or uploaded.Members are not an audience to be marketed at, and nobody is pitched the moment they arrive.
What you build here belongs to you.Your profile and your trusted circle travel with you, rather than living inside somebody's event software.
It meets late for one side and early for the other.Online at an hour that is inconvenient for somebody, honestly negotiated, and in person on each shore as each room grows.
You join by referral.The point is not to be the biggest network in either country. It is to be a room where everyone in it can be vouched for by somebody already inside it.

Worth a read

Read How to actually do business between Italy and Australia

A practical guide to doing business across the Italy-Australia corridor, why the eight to ten hour gap is the smallest of the problems, and how a trusted introduction on the other side does what a cold email never will.

See it for yourself

A ponte is not a road that happens to cross water, it is a structure that needs solid ground at both ends before anyone can walk over it. Between Italy and Australia the distance was never the difficulty, the difficulty is that most people only ever have footing on one side.

Take a tour of the Italy-Australia Bridge