Paolo Gradnik was born in 1956, and graduated with a degree in Pharmacy. After graduation, he worked for a worked for a pharmacist until he earned his pharmacist title in 1993. Contemporaneously, he improved his technical and scientific preparation with post-graduate courses, particularly in pharmaceutical economy.
Gradnik maintained a relationship with the academic world, collaborating with the center of Pharm-Economy at the University of Milan, with many publications in the field, and with the Ministry of Health as the expert of the ECM program. Gradnik also chaired the Guido Muralti Foundation, which works to study economics and law in the pharmaceutical sector. He expanded his working experience by undertaking the intermediate distribution, where he held the roles of a technical director, but above all, between 1996 and 1999, he was a part of, in many diverse roles of responsibility, of numerous Boards of member companies of an international leader group in the sector.
From1994 to 2007, he was committed to Federfarma, on all steps of the ladder: provincial, regional, and national. Elected in 2006 to the City Council of Milan, for five years Gradnik was committed to political activity. In 2000 he began his commitment to the field of social volunteering. He founded, with some of his friends, the “Banco Farmaceutico” which collected and freely distributed pharmaceuticals to those in need. The Banco grew until it became a Foundation which today covers all of Italy and gave birth to analogous initiatives in Spain, Portugal, and Argentina, each year distributing more than €15 million worth of pharmaceuticals. Gradnik is the President of this Foundation.