From Blissful Beginnings to Global Impact- Defining Resilience and Strength
“I felt like a superstar, the music, the energy, suddenly I was standing tall, grounded in everything I’d been through. I felt my power.” That is what Alice Ponti, SVP of Innovation at VentureFuel shared about her recent headshot experience with me at AllAboutHeadshots.
On a gray, forgettable Tuesday, Alice Ponti stepped into my photography studio to update her professional headshot. She expected lights and lenses, maybe a bit of small talk. What she didn’t expect was to reconnect — vividly, powerfully — with her own story.
Today, Ponti is SVP of Innovation at VentureFuel, a role that demands vision, adaptability, and courage. Traits, it turns out, she has in abundance — because her story didn’t begin in a boardroom. It began in a fruit market, somewhere between revolution and romance.
Her father, an Italian journalist, was sent to Madagascar in the 1970s to cover political unrest. Amid the tension, he found something unexpected: love. He met Alice’s mother in a bustling market. She was grounded and radiant. He was worldly and curious. They shared little on paper but everything in spirit. Together, they moved to Mauritius, where Alice was born.
“I was truly born in Wonderland,” she says. “It was a beautiful, blissful beginning.”
But paradise, she learned early, can shift.
When Alice was four, her father passed away. The family had been living in the south of France — a move he’d made to give her the best opportunities. Suddenly alone, with no support network and a young daughter to raise, her mother made a choice: to stay, to build, and to give Alice every chance to thrive.
“Looking back, I’m still in awe of her strength,” Alice says. “She had no money, no connections, and somehow gave me everything — stability, independence, and the belief that I could belong anywhere and achieve anything.”
That belief became a blueprint. From France to the UK, then the U.S., Ponti built her life across borders and industries — earning three citizenships and forging a career that spans research, marketing, and innovation. Each move, she says, was both thrilling and uncomfortable.
“I’ve always been a globetrotter,” she reflects. “And I’ve always learned the most when I felt out of my comfort zone. That discomfort pushed me to grow. It made me a better leader, a better citizen, a better friend.”
Her professional path mirrors her personal one — defined by intentional pivots and bold choices. She left the security of global corporations to join a fast-growing boutique advisory firm. Why? Because she believed in the mission. Because it lit her heart up. And because instinct told her it was time.
“If I could give one piece of advice, it would be this,” she says. “Trust your instincts. Take the leap when it feels right. Even if it’s uncomfortable — especially then — that’s where growth begins.”
Ponti doesn’t shy away from her past. She wears it like a second skin — a mix of geographies, languages, challenges, and wonder. And though she now lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, surrounded by the hum of ambition, she still carries that fruit market in Madagascar, that beach in Mauritius, that sunny apartment in southern France.
“I wouldn’t trade any of it,” she says. “The little girl, the globetrotter, the leader, the risk-taker — they’re all part of me. Standing there under the lights, I saw how far they’ve brought me — and how much more there is to explore.”