The advocate who solves problems by negotiating with nations and companies

She moves between her New York studio (in Midtown, near the Glass Palace) and Washington, between Europe and Ukraine. 'This specialisation,' Benedetta clarifies, 'has a systemic component. Depending on how you define procurement and control procedures, you forge very strong links with one nation or the other. Washington is increasingly attentive. Legal and procedural matrices can be crucial in the political and economic-technological balances between blocs. For instance, China on this issue of legal procurement is very active, especially in Africa and Eastern Europe'.

The host brings a carafe of house red wine to the table. A Primitivo that is not bad at all. At the fourth time I ask for more focaccia with cherry tomatoes - which is great - the waitress looks at me unconvinced, but smiling.

Benedetta belongs to the anthropology of the daughters and sons of the southern bourgeoisie who have a precocious and profound vocation for study, attend good high schools in the provinces, manage to make the most of the opportunities of a university education in larger cities (in her specific case the Luiss Guido Carli in Rome, where she graduated in law), have an enormous desire to come out of their shells and a drive, both mild and fierce, to impose themselves by working, working, working. His father Franco worked at the Apulo-Lucano Land Reclamation Consortium and was an adjunct professor of physics at Bari Polytechnic. His mother Franca, a civil engineer, designed public works such as the underground car parks in Trani, Polignano a mare and Canosa di Puglia. Her maternal grandfather, Michele, was the first district doctor of Gravina in Puglia: 'I graduated in three and a half years at Luiss. I have very good memories of my university. And also of the boys and girls from the south who came with me to Rome to find a way: my friends and I were very serious and determined, punctual with deadlines and dedicated to our studies. Immediately after graduation I went to work at the World Bank in Washington, where I was in charge of training. I devoted myself to the procurement system, bargaining and negotiation. Studying all this and explaining it to others. At the age of twenty-one, I was lecturing to elderly ministers and mature senior government officials from Africa, South America and Asia'.

We both choose orecchiette pasta with turnip tops, pan-fried with breadcrumbs, chilli pepper and anchovies as our first course.

Benedetta's profile is peculiar: she has a solid, square operational drive - a la Harvey Keitel's 'I'm Mister Wolf and I solve problems' in Pulp Fiction - and she has a conceptual aptitude for constructing legal and business codes, which is emulsified in her teaching and in passing it on to others. He holds the chair of Government Contracts at George Washington University in Washington, DC, the only American school on procurement. In Italy he teaches in the masters of Fashion Law and Art Law at Luiss.

We arrived early, before one o'clock. Before long the restaurant is filled with families from Alberobello. In addition to heading the UN legal office, which oversees the negotiation, contracting and any subsequent criticality in transactions between the UN Headquarters and the donor governments that pay for projects and the beneficiary governments that receive them, she was also, from 2020 to 2022, head of the Fiduciary Management Oversight Group, the UN asset body to which all financial and administrative managers must report: money flows, audits, controls and anti-corruption activities. Significant responsibility, a lot of hassle and real power, in a very competitive environment: 'Super competitive, although meritocratic. At the UN, no one has ever asked me to make photocopies. The acts of submission imposed in Italy on young people at university and in the world of work, which even I, as a recent graduate, was asked to do, are not even conceivable'.

The temptation of the second course is strong, even though the quantities are very large. She prefers to pass it on. I try the baked sea bass with tomatoes, onions, capers and olives anyway.

Benedetta's professional position, which is at some neuralgic crossroads as evidenced by the assignment given to her by the White House with respect to the reconstruction of Ukraine, also has a substratum of 'politics' and knowledge of the international mechanisms of power and diplomacy: 'In 2014, I negotiated the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons. I met Assad four times. The operation was complex. The Danish and Norwegian governments had provided cargo ships with which to transport the chemical weapons away from Syria. The Italian government had authorised docking at the port of Gioia Tauro. The American government had the task of recovering the chemical weapons in Italy and then destroying them'.

For dessert we go for two classics of home cooking: she goes for a tiramisu and I go for a croccantino, almond and chocolate semifreddo.

Benedetta is, today, a 40-year-old woman.

For her, the gender question has arisen, concretely and dramatically, especially in theatres of war, where certain interpretations of religions and more tribal cultures accentuate a female minority that affects the whole world, and in part still the West and its modernities.

"I have experienced the greatest difficulties in radical Islamic countries. They do not shake your hand and never meet your eyes. I worked a lot on numbers and data trying to close negotiations in a precise and formalised manner. Even though it is not easy, because negotiation always implies a personal and emotional, political and civil exchange and mutual recognition. In Mali, thousands of mines had been left over from the civil war between the French-backed government and jihadist groups. For days my interlocutors, on their side of the table, never looked me in the face or in the eyes. But this, too, is a piece of life and work that has to be lived,' concludes the student away in Rome, now in New York and tomorrow, peace permitting, in Kiev.