Relevance and Insight

If you had wandered into the SAIS Bologna Center yesterday evening, you might have bumped into:

Mario Draghi

Italy's central bank governor, who is also on the European Central Bank's governing council; the heads of four of Europe's biggest banks and insurance companies; the chairman of Italy's biggest utility; the international and national press.

Mario Draghi came to Bologna from a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Paris to deliver a lecture to those prominent guests, yes, and above all to SAIS students.

Draghi is considered a leading candidate to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet as the ECB chief. He made time to come to Bologna to deliver a memorial lecture in honor of former SAIS professor Enzo Grilli, whom Draghi knew well.

A press photo showing Draghi
and SAIS Bologna Director
Kenneth Keller

The chance for students to meet such figures is part of what sets the SAIS experience apart. We wrote about this in an earlier post, on a week when U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner spoke at SAIS Washington and  ex-European Commission President Romano Prodi spoke at SAIS Bologna.

For audio of Draghi's speech, and questions by SAIS Bologna students, click here.

Below, students John Ulrich and Jerome Ingenhoff offer their views to Admissions assistant Amina Abdiuahab after Draghi's speech.



Nelson Graves