Renato Panesi, an entrepreneur with a strong background in B2B marketing and sales, is co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of D-Orbit.
In 2002, after getting an MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering, he joined Finmeccanica/Leonardo, an Italian multinational aerospace and defense firm, where he worked in R&D as aerodynamics and flight control systems engineer first and as project manager later.
In 2008 Renato got a PhD, with honors, in Advanced Flight Control systems. In 2009 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to attend a Technology Entrepreneurship program at Santa Clara University, California, with additional courses and seminars at UC Berkeley and Stanford. A year later, after successfully completing the program, Renato got an internship position at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
In 2011, Renato came back to Italy, where he co-founded D-Orbit. At the same time, he became marketing & sales Area Manager at Finmeccanica/Leonardo, in charge of sales activities of defense products in the Asia-Pacific region. After proudly signing various multi-million-dollar contracts, in 2015 Renato left Finmeccanica/Leonardo to start working full-time at D-Orbit as Chief Commercial Officer.