Pasquale Salzano has been the Chairman of the CDP Foundation since November 2020.

He has also been the Chairman of SIMEST and the Chief International Affairs Officer of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti since December 2019.

He was the Italian Ambassador to Qatar from April 2017 until December 2019.

He graduated in Law in 1996 from the Federico II University of Naples, where he subsequently collaborated with the Chair of International Law with Prof. Benedetto Conforti. He obtained his PhD in International Law at the University of Siena and passed the state bar exam.

He began the diplomatic career in 1999 and held his first assignments in Rome, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the Directorate General for European Integration.

In 2001 he was Chief of Staff of the OSCE International Mission in Belgrade and the following year he was in Pristina to establish the Italian diplomatic office in Kosovo, today the Embassy of Italy.

In 2005 he was in New York at the Permanent Representation of Italy to the United Nations, where he dealt with the Balkans dossier.

In 2007 he returned to Rome at the Office of the Diplomatic Advisor of Palazzo Chigi where, in view of the Italian G8 Presidency, he was appointed as Head of the Sherpa G8/G20 Office.

At the end of the Italian G8 Presidency in 2009, he moved to the OECD Secretariat in Paris to be the Director of the Heiligendamm/L'Aquila Process, a process of dialogue and involvement of the main emerging economies on the major global challenges launched in 2007 from the G8 countries.

Since 2011 he has been seconded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ENI as Head of International and Institutional Relations and Head of the ENI office in the United States. In 2014 he was appointed Senior Vice President and subsequently joined the ENI Management Committee as Executive Vice President and Director of Institutional Affairs.

In 2011 he was named "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum and member of the Italian board by the European Council on Foreign Relations.

As "Young Global Leader" of the World Economic Forum, in 2012 he was selected to participate in the Leadership programs of the Kennedy School of Government of the University of Harvard and of the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs of the University of Yale. In 2013 he also attended the Oxford Energy Seminar intensive program at the University of Oxford. He is the author of numerous publications on energy and geopolitics and is Adjunct Professor of gas geopolitics at the LUISS Business School in Rome.