Cecilia Danieli was born in Udine in 1943, a descendant of a dynasty of steel entrepreneurs. After some experiences abroad, first in England and then in the United States, where she perfected her language skills, she enrolled in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Trieste. In 1977, she joined Officine Danieli. She decided to take care of the administrative-financial part and the management and organization of personnel. In 1976, she received her first important job, a contract for the construction of a steel mill with an annual capacity of 500,000 tons in East Germany. In 1980, Cecilia Danieli became the General Manager of the company.
The determination with which she pursued the company's growth objectives earned her the nickname "First Lady of Steel." In 1991, the shareholders' meeting elected her President of the Danieli Group. The "iron lady" passed away in 1999 in Aviano (Friuli Venezia Giulia), at only fifty-six years old.
Despite the nickname "iron lady," Cecilia Danieli was "one of the sweetest and calmest people one could meet in the certainly challenging world of entrepreneurship, just like the Friulians who have a rough exterior but a gentle soul." Mother of three children and with a great passion for history and the mountains. She always kept away from the spotlight, saying, "I hate the limelight and prefer that the results speak for themselves." Attentive to the affairs of her company and cautious in her assessments, Cecilia Danieli is one of those entrepreneurs who prefer the figures in the balance sheets to media previews.
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