Valentino Castellani was the Mayor of Turin from 1993 to 2001. In 2001, after completing his second term as mayor, he was appointed President of the Organizing Committee of the XX Winter Olympic Games (TOROC). Mr. Castellani’s priority as mayor was to provide a vision for the future of the city. Turin had lost its manufacturing base and needed to create a vision for the future. Leading an inclusionary process in which both public and private citizens engaged, the result was the first strategic plan ever completed by a major italian city. In addition, he focused on creating an international network for the city by actively building relationships with numerous other European cities, including Barcelona, Lyon, Glasgow, Stuttgart, Koln, Bilbao and Stockholm, to better understand their best practices.
As mayor, Mr. Castellani guided the candidature team for the Winter Olympic Games. The success of the Turin Games was unanimously echoed both at the national and international level and with that event Turin closed the last page of its old history, and began moving towards its future.
Mr. Castellani graduated in Electronic Engineering in 1963 at the Politecnico di Torino (Turin) and spent a year at MIT where he graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1965, returning to Turin to become a Professor of Telecommunications at the Politecnico di Torino.