Simona Malpezzi

Simona Flavia Malpezzi (Cernusco sul Naviglio, 22 August 1972) is an Italian politician and member of the Democratic Party. She served as Undersecretary of State for Relations with Parliament in the governments of Giuseppe Conte (Conte II) and Mario Draghi from 2019 to 2021.
On 25 March 2021, she was unanimously elected Leader of the Democratic Party group in the Senate, a position she also held during the 19th legislature until 28 March 2023.
She graduated in Modern Literature from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan and has been a secondary school teacher since 1997. She also taught in Germany at the Volkshochschule in Aschaffenburg, gaining experience in issues related to school dropout, academic guidance, and education policy.
Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2013 and to the Senate in 2018, she served on the Culture and Education Committees and held roles in the Parliamentary Commission for Childhood and Adolescence. In December 2025, as president and rapporteur of the Commission, she led a fact-finding inquiry into the emotional and psychological vulnerability of young people, focusing on depression, self-harm, and eating disorders, and prepared the proposal for the final report.
In the internal debate within the Democratic Party, in November 2025 she commented on local election results, emphasizing the need to develop a political project capable of bringing back voters who had drifted away and of speaking to a broader audience of citizens. In January and February 2026, she reiterated the importance of internal pluralism, calling for respect for statutory timelines in convening party leadership bodies and arguing that, in order to win elections, it is necessary to include all factions of the party without internal vetoes. She also highlighted her belonging to the reformist wing, expressing hope that recognition of pluralism would translate into concrete decisions.