C‘It’s an invisible thread that runs through the aseptic corridors of CERN in Geneva And the dusty lands of Afghanistan and is finally knotted between the pages of an intimate autobiography. He is the one holding the head Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer of Particle Physics Research Centerthe first in the history of the temple of world science, a woman who has spent her life managing urgencybut who today decided to slow down to tell his story. However in his book The future that didn’t exist. My life between humanity and technology (Sperling & Kupfer), Porcari does not celebrate his career, but it tells what’s “behind”: doubts, the struggle of being a mother, burnouts and that “truth of who we are when no one is looking”.
Enrica Porcari’s autobiography, from humanitarian emergencies to the peaks of CERN in Geneva
In a world that runs, in short, Porcari felt the need for a break to seek the profound meaning of each step. «At a certain point in life you feel the need to look backnot out of nostalgia, but to understand what invisible thread united all those steps which, taken individually, seemed like just choices, challenges, emergencies to be faced.” This writing was an act of resistance against speed: «Writing the book was my way of slowing down, or perhaps, more honestly, of returning to myself because writing requires presence, silence».
Behind the facade of the “top manager”, Porcari reveals a truth that rarely finds space in CVs: «Often, when you look at a career from the outside, you only see the upward trajectory: the goals, the appointments, the successes. What is rarely told is the fragile, human partmade of fears, hesitations, stumbles, and of people who support you. Yet it is precisely there that the choices that truly change a life are formed.”
A humanist leader among engineers, without asking permission
His rise to CERN is the story of a paradox: a leader trained in the liberal arts leading an army of engineers. For a long time, this diversity was experienced as a lack. «For years, I carried with me the belief that I was not “technical enough”. Coming from a humanistic background, I felt like a guest in a world dominated by engineers». That feeling led her to justify herself, to seek a legitimation that today, finally, she found in her own uniqueness. «Then I realized that what I considered a weakness was, in reality, my strength». In an era dominated by artificial intelligence, the ability to interpret becomes more valuable than technical knowledge as an end in itself. «I no longer say “I’m not a technical expert, but…”. I say: “Precisely because I am not a technical expert, I see what others may not see“I don’t apologize anymore. And I don’t feel the need to anymore.”
From humanitarian missions in the mud of Afghanistan to the laboratories of Geneva: the journey of a manager who has stopped apologizing for her sensitivity.
The inner voice and the risk of self-sabotage
On his inner journey, Enrica Porcari obviously also faces the demon of self-sabotagethat “slightly rough older sister” who accompanied her right into the most prestigious interview rooms. «For a long time that voice was my shadow: meticulous, ready to question every step, to belittle every success.” Instead of fighting it, however, he learned to welcome it as part of the landscape: «For a long time I thought I had to silence it. Then I realized that it’s impossible: you don’t turn off the inner voice, you recognize it. When I stopped confusing it with the truth, it lost its power».
From emergencies in Afghanistan to the responsibility of AI
Porcari’s path to CERN was long and challenging. Before the great physics laboratory, there was, in fact, a completely different world, the “world of dust”. Years spent between FAO and WFP, the World Food Programme, where technology was not an abstraction but a question of dignity and survival. «You learn very quickly that you can’t rely on systems alone. The situations are too complex, too fragile, too human». It is in Afghanistan that Porcari understood how a technical tool can be transformed into a political and social act.
Installing a mobile network wasn’t just connectivity: «I saw something else: uno tool that could allow local women to earn moneyreselling telephone services to populations who no longer had the opportunity to communicate. It was enough to move your gaze a little and suddenly it was no longer an infrastructure, it was a door.” A vision that today guides his reflection on Artificial Intelligencewhich must not become a mechanism for the few. «We must be the ones to chart the path, to choose the direction, to ensure that this revolution remains an instrument at our service and not the other way around».
Empathy as an operating system
Furthermore, for Enrica Porcari, the success of an organization is not measured only in spreadsheets, but in the ability to “create a village”. Empathy is not a nice accessory, but a strategic necessity. «Empathy is a lens: it makes visible what otherwise escapes. Empathy is not a soft skill, it is the invisible operating system that allows everything else to move.” It is trust that allows people to embrace the new without fear.
Motherhood, burnout and rebirth
The story becomes even more intimate when it comes to the struggle of reconciling the identity of a mother with a global career. To her guilt-ridden thirty-year-old self, however, today she would say: «Don’t fear the choice that doesn’t exist. You don’t have to sacrifice one part of yourself for the other to live. Over time you will learn that motherhood and identity do not cancel each other: they illuminate each other».
But the journey required a price, paid in the form of burnout, a “slow loss of clarity” that forced her to stop at Stanford. But that pause was not a surrender, but a necessary “act of maintenance”. «Since then I have known that “standing still” is not opposed to movement. It’s the way in which movement makes sense again.”
The flame of the future
Today, Enrica Porcari looks at the quantum revolution with the same spark of those who still want to imagine the “future that didn’t exist”. He dreams of a world where discovery is nobody’s propertyfollowing the example of CERN where «it is demonstrated that the most revolutionary discovery arises when it is decided that no one should possess it alone». His book is not a testament, but a passing of the batonwhose proceeds will go to support Italian teachers. The final message is an invitation to hope: «I hope that whoever reads takes with them a simple certainty: no stretch of one’s journey is ever wasted. Growing, changing, loving and working are imperfect, yet profoundly human movements.”