Fortune Italia has named Antonella Ferrara, founder, president and artistic director of Taobuk – Taormina International Book Festival, among its 50 Most Powerful Women 2026, the Italian edition of Fortune’s list of the most influential women, which has been published since 1998. Compiled by the magazine’s editors with an independent advisory board, the selection brings together fifty women at the top of technology, publishing, finance, the STEM professions, culture and sport, chosen ‘for the path they have built, the results they have achieved and their ability to open up new avenues’.
Her inclusion recognises a trajectory without parallel in Italy: through the creation and growth of Taobuk, Antonella Ferrara has turned a literary vision into a well-established international cultural enterprise, generating considerable economic and reputational benefits for the region.
Over sixteen editions, the festival has brought writers, artists and scientists from all over the world to Sicily. The Taobuk Award, established in 2014, counts among its recipients Nobel laureates in literature such as Orhan Pamuk, Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk, Jon Fosse and Abdulrazak Gurnah, alongside Haruki Murakami, Paul Auster, Marina Abramović and Esther Duflo. In 2026 the Gala at Taormina’s Ancient Theatre, broadcast on Rai 1, drew more than a million viewers.
The fifty women were presented on 26 October in Milan, at the MPW Convention hosted by SDA Bocconi School of Management. At the same event, the school’s observatory on women executives released national figures that make the news all the more significant: in Italy, women hold 17 per cent of senior executive positions and just 6 per cent of chief executive roles. Against this backdrop, Taobuk’s governance offers a model of sound management, showing how the cultural industries can dismantle long-standing structural inequalities.
