About the author
Silvia Carter: who is she?
That’s Silvia Carter, the one on the left with missing teeth, with her brother and sisters, in Grottammare, Italy. She’s the founder of ToWebOrNotToWeb and the author of The Digital Exporter Series and other books. She was probably 5 and she had no idea she would end up living in Paris and marrying an American after years of expatriation and traveling around the world.
Yes, she is Italian, and Italians are particularly international, following the example of Marco Polo, Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Columbus.
But, in her case, she had to learn to become international. When she was young, she was seriously Germano phobic, deeply allergic to other languages, with a real aversion to anything culturally foreign. Too complicated! Why bother when she had what she needed at home in Italy in Italian?
But one day her “home” got filled with travelers: almost everyone around her was traveling, for work, studies, vacation and so on. So much so that staying Italo-Italian became a handicap. And there she was, launched for an Erasmus year in Dublin at Trinity College, with an English vocabulary of almost ten words!
Why export? Why digital?
Since then, her international life has become her profession. First in international marketing, then as export manager and worldwide sales director.
Once she settled in France, she became more and more interested in the digital issues related to export.
She wanted to understand the best practices and technical details. This is what pushed her to get a master’s degree in digital marketing in 2012 and to start her own company, ToWebOrNotToWeb. Today, she helps firms find business opportunities on the Internet and develop their digital sales internationally.
The availability of web tools offers new access to the global markets in ways that were unthinkable some years ago. Learning how to use these technologies is now essential. It is the only way to develop new opportunities in the international markets and to preserve a business during unexpected crises like COVID-19.
This is what motivates Silvia in her job; engaging in value creation by helping companies take full advantage of all the new web tools for their business.
