Saladino Antonio

A veterinary surgeon, born in Nicastro, he lived in Milan during his university years, moved through many jobs, and is now CEO of Dolce Italia srl, which runs a café and pastry shop in the city as well as a shop selling excellent sweets at Lamezia Terme airport.
In 1989, together with a university friend, Dr Antonio Agostoni from Lecco, a partner in the Icam chocolate factory, he created Silagum, a company producing gummy sweets. It was his first industrial venture.
From Silagum came a series of parallel experiences. He facilitated, for example, the start-up of a hundred companies. In 1995 he became head of the Compagnia delle Opere for southern Italy. Between 1997 and 1999, he was appointed by the then Treasury Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi as a board member of the Society for Young Entrepreneurship.
In 1998, with a group of southern entrepreneurs, he set up a cooperative, from which Obiettivo Lavoro was born. Then Obiettivo Lavoro grew and became the first wholly Italian-owned company operating in the field of temporary employment. He broadened that experience by working as a manager for the South, then took care of large clients, later on special projects, and finally decided to strike out on his own and set up Need. It was in practice a ‘little Accenture’ that, born in the South, which is unique in Italy, went up the boot, so much so that today it has offices in Rome and Milan. He actually transfers work to poor areas instead of moving people from them to rich areas.