Team size: 12 people

Career Biography

Isabella Betti has developed her career first in leading Italian and international law firms and, subsequently, as in-house counsel within complex corporate environments. Over the years she has provided strategic legal support across a wide range of areas — from corporate governance to intellectual property, from compliance to international contracts — advising top management with a pragmatic, business-oriented approach. She spent nearly fifteen years at Gucci, in roles of increasing responsibility supporting the creative, supply chain, marketing, communications and licensing functions, before being appointed General Counsel of Etro. She later joined Prada Group as Legal Director Marketing and Communications, a newly established role dedicated to the legal support of the Group’s brands in their marketing and communications activities. Since December 2025 she has served as General Counsel of the Valentino Group.

What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions of the past year?

These have been my first months at Valentino, so much of the past year has been about earning the trust of the business quickly while contributing, from day one, to matters of real strategic weight. Since joining Valentino, my team and I have been engaged on a broad range of strategic matters supporting the Group’s global operations. Without disclosing confidential details, our work has included a complex intra-group reorganisation of an industrial subsidiary, involving governance redesign, labour law aspects and dialogue with minority shareholders; the negotiation of significant licensing, technology and procurement agreements at Group level; the review and strengthening of internal policies on contract formalisation, procurement governance and third-party risk management; the roll-out of NIS2 readiness initiatives and board-level compliance training; and advisory on IP protection, responsible marketing and ESG disclosures across our licensing and communications activities. What has made this period especially rewarding is seeing the team engage on all these fronts with energy and genuine ownership.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis?

In my experience, resilience is built well before a crisis materialises. I try to focus on three levers. The first is anticipation, through consistent horizon-scanning on the regulatory and geopolitical developments affecting the fashion supply chain. The second is process: involving Legal early in cross-functional decisions, so that risk is considered upstream rather than addressed after the fact. The third is people: a team with clear delegation, direct access to the C-suite and the Board, and a culture that values calibrated judgement over reactive answers. In periods of disruption, I place particular emphasis on clarity of communication, disciplined documentation and close alignment with the CEO, CFO and external counsel, so that the business can move forward with the legal certainty it needs.

What does being strategic mean to you?

To me, being strategic means aligning legal work with the long-term ambition of the business, choosing where to invest limited resources, and having the courage to say “not yet” or “not this way”. For a fashion house operating in several and diverse markets, it also means recognising brand equity as a legal asset, to be protected as rigorously as any financial one.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Business fluency, intellectual honesty, cross-cultural sensitivity and the ability to translate complex legal issues into decisions which the Board can act upon. To these, I would add a genuine curiosity for technology and data governance, which is increasingly part of the role rather than adjacent to it. If I could pass on one lesson from my years across different fashion houses, it would be this: credibility is built by understanding the business as deeply as the people who run it — the law follows.

How can general counsel foster a corporate culture that supports ESG principles and compliance across all levels of the organisation?

By moving from a “policy-first” to a “behaviour-first” approach: embedding ESG in contracts, supplier onboarding, marketing sign-off and executive KPIs, and by ensuring that every public claim is substantiated, verifiable and free from greenwashing risk.