In a nutshell. I build and lead content operations for media companies, brands, and corporates: designing editorial workflows, selecting and implementing the right tech stack, and scaling newsrooms and content studios across markets and languages.
Strategy and systems are my focus, but I stay hands-on by design: writing, editing, and shaping content alongside the teams I lead.
Work • Expertise & current focus
Writing & Publishing • Bio

Work
Half my career inside media companies and publishers, the other half within brands and corporates. At heart, I’ll always be a media professional: that legacy shapes every content and communication initiative I lead.
Today
VP Content at EDM Publications, a Germany-based business information publisher. I lead a distributed newsroom as Editor-in-Chief while redesigning content operations for global scale: lean, tech-supported workflows, from automated newsgathering to AI-assisted editing and research. Editorial strategy built around user needs for decision-makers, leaders, and investors.
Before
Media Companies
- RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE
Global Head Digital RB Channels - DE AGOSTINI PUBLISHING
EU Head of Digital - MEDIASET (NOW: MFE)
Digital Product Manager
Corporates
- SONOVA GROUP
Head of Content & Design - FOUNDAMENTAL.VC
Brand & Content Director - INDUSTRY DIVE
Content Strategy Director
By the numbers
- TEAM LEADERSHIP Led international content teams of up to 21 FTEs and 100+ freelancers across editorial, creative, and production functions.
- GLOBAL REACH Oversaw operations across 50 countries and 4 languages, including full responsibility for localization teams and workflows.
- BUDGET MANAGEMENT Managed annual budgets of up to €7M for content commissioning, licensing, and content tech infrastructure.
Expertise and
Current focus
â–ş CONTENT OPERATIONS
I build and run the systems behind content production: workflows, vendor management, tech stack, team coordination. I create the conditions for teams to deliver great content at scale and on time.
â–ş CONTENT STRATEGY & GOVERNANCE
I define how content supports business and brand goals: messaging frameworks, channel architecture, editorial standards, QA processes, and rights management.
â–ş PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE
I work at the intersection of content and product, ensuring content architecture serves real user needs and that UX enables content to reach the right audience. I speak product and dev fluently.
â–ş MARKETING CONTENT
I bring an editorial lens to performance goals: helping teams grow audiences and convert customers without losing voice or standards. I shape messaging and formats, not run campaigns.
Current Focus
I’m transforming a traditional B2B publisher into an intelligence-driven editorial operation: introducing strategic frameworks from the best in publishing, from the User Needs Model to audience-first planning, and building AI-enhanced workflows across the newsroom. The work happens at EDM Publications / SGI Europe. The thinking is public, documented via a Transformation Diary on LinkedIn:
Next in the diary: how Airtable became the newsroom’s central nervous system. Why metadata is the unsexy layer that makes intelligence-driven publishing possible. And how Claude and retrieval-augmented generation are becoming the editorial team’s institutional memory: ensuring consistency across what we publish, surfacing what we’ve already covered, and assisting newsletter production with contextual understanding of our own archive.
Education, Training, Languages
Education
- M.Sc. Business Administration at Bocconi University, Milan 110/110
- Executive Leadership Program at IE Business School and IBC Kolding, DK
Training
- Agile Product Owner (Scrum Alliance, Vienna, 2014)
- Design Thinking (Hasso Plattner Institute, 2016)
Languages
English C2 • German C1/2 • Italian MT • French ELEM • Ivrit ELEM
Writing and publishing
I write about Europe: its memory, its contradictions, its possible future.
My essays live on Substack, some republished elsewhere under CC license.

Stories big and small that start in Berlin and look eastward, where the heart of the continent beats and its future is shaped.
Latest essays
- The massacres that came before the bloodlands – and the Jewish writer who documented them with a notebook and a false name.
- From a Jewish legend to Anthropic's warning: are we wise enough for what we have created?

Storie che iniziano a Berlino e guardano verso est, dove batte il cuore dell’Europa e si scrive il suo futuro.
Latest essays
- I massacri che hanno preceduto le “bloodlands”, e lo scrittore ebreo che li ha documentati con un taccuino e un nome falso.
- Da un’antica leggenda ebraica all’allarme di Anthropic: siamo abbastanza saggi per ciò che abbiamo creato?

Eine Auswahl meiner veröffentlichten Essays und Erzählungen, ins Deutsche übersetzt.
Demnächst online.
Books and podcasts
Pubblicazioni in italiano, 2025 e 2026

Memoria storica in Germania: come è nata e dove sta andando la Erinnerungskultur. 2025, BBDE, disponibile in e-book

Un libro breve e scorrevole in dieci capitoli, con un podcast di accompagnamento, per esplorare la lingua e il mondo che la parla. 2026, ETS, cartaceo e e-book
Contact: LinkedIn or berlin@valentinagiannella.eu
Substack
Beyond Berlin
Stories big and small that start in Berlin and look eastward, where the heart of the continent beats and its future is shaped. beyondberlin.substack.com ↗
Berlino⬄Europa
Storie grandi e piccole che iniziano a Berlino e guardano verso est, dove batte il cuore dell’Europa e si scrive il suo futuro berlinoeuropa.substack.com ↗
Publications
Tedesco ma non troppo
Una lingua e dieci motivi per amarla. Con Valentina Giuliani · Edizioni ETS, 2026
Scheda editore ↗
Podcast ↗
Campione della memoria
Memoria storica in Germania: come è nata e dove sta andando l’Erinnerungskultur Info e download ↗
Info
Proud, passionate citizen of one Europe: one that goes from Lisbon to Luhansk, from Tromsø to Tbilisi.
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