The Unstoppable Women 2026 list by StartupItalia, launched ten years ago to shine a light on women at the forefront of innovation, returns this year to examine the presence of women in the sectors transforming work, research and society. Artificial intelligence is among the key themes of this year’s edition — a field in which women remain underrepresented, despite being among those most directly affected by the transformations brought about by this technology.
According to data reported by Unstoppable Women, in 2022 women accounted for only around 30% of the AI-related workforce. A gender gap also persists in research and knowledge dissemination: between 2015 and 2025, 71.76% of publications on AI included at least one female author, but women were the first author in only 26% of cases. In 2024, women also accounted for 32.6% of speakers at tech conferences.
It is against this backdrop that the Unstoppable Women 2026 list — which is not intended as a ranking of merit, but rather as a snapshot of women professionals working in innovation — brings together more than one thousand names from a wide range of fields.
Among the women featured in this year’s edition is Marilù Capparelli, University of Bologna alumna and Google’s Legal Director, whose career offers a significant example of the intersection between law, technology and digital transformation.
Marilù Capparelli: From Civil Law to the Frontier of New Technologies
Marilù Capparelli’s journey at the University of Bologna began with a degree in Law, awarded in 1997 with a final grade of 110/110, and continued with a PhD in Civil Law, which she completed in 2005. During the same period, she further specialised in European Union law at the College of Europe and in consumer law at UCLouvain.
Her legal education was complemented by an international career: she worked at leading law firms in Italy and abroad and served as a legal adviser at the Court of Justice of the European Union, where she worked on corporate and commercial law, M&A, antitrust and international litigation.
From 2005 to 2009, she served as Director of Legal and Public Policy Affairs at eBay and PayPal. Since 2009, she has been Google’s Legal Director, leading a team of lawyers working across several European countries. Her responsibilities cover a broad range of areas, including corporate law, intellectual property, media and web law, litigation, privacy, antitrust, regulation and strategic agreements.
Her professional career illustrates how digital transformation is about far more than technology alone. Innovation brings with it new legal, ethical and regulatory questions, requiring professionals who can navigate across different disciplines.
It is precisely at this intersection between law and technology that Marilù has developed part of her academic and public-engagement work. She teaches media and new technology law in a range of courses and master’s programmes, including the Law of Internet Technology master’s programme at Bocconi University, and is co-author of the book Artificial Intelligence: Law, Rights and Ethics, edited by Professor Ugo Ruffolo.
Her relationship with the University of Bologna did not end with the completion of her PhD. She went on to serve as an adjunct professor for three years and is now a member of the Advisory Board of the University of Bologna Law Review.
She has also received several international recognitions. In 2018, she was invited to deliver a lecture at Harvard University, while in 2019 she was included among the Inspiring Fifty, the fifty women recognised as leading figures in Italy’s technology ecosystem. She also received the Chambers CG Influencers Award in 2019.
An Education That Continues to Engage with the Future
Marilù Capparelli’s professional journey offers a concrete perspective on the question at the heart of Unstoppable Women: it is not enough to ask how many women are represented in innovation sectors; we must also look at the skills and career paths that enable them to take part in the places where the future is designed and regulated.
In her case, that journey began at the University of Bologna, with a legal education that over the years has engaged with some of the most profound changes in the digital economy and society — from intellectual property to privacy, from antitrust to media and the web, and ultimately to the new challenges posed by artificial intelligence.
This ability to move across disciplines and different contexts is also where the value of a university education can be measured: not only in acquiring specialised knowledge, but also in developing the tools to apply it to new scenarios, helping to interpret transformations that transcend the boundaries of individual professions.
Marilù Capparelli’s inclusion among the Unstoppable Women 2026 therefore represents a significant recognition for the Alma Mater community: an international career built on the education she received in Bologna, and a professional journey that for almost two decades has placed her at the heart of technological transformation.
Read the StartupItalia article.
