Michael Di Grazia

I'm Michael, my purpose is:

Learning, improving, and achieving through pushing boundaries. Doing it with connected people.

My Story

I was born in Melbourne and am the eldest of three brothers; we are all two years apart. My Dad was born in Italy, but came to Australia very young, while my Mum was born here, but comes from a German migrant family.

I was close to my Italian side growing up, especially my grandparents. My relationship with my brothers has gotten stronger as we’ve matured, even as they’ve both moved to the other side of the world, Berlin and Toronto. I visit one of them every other year.

I am quite introverted and have always taken comfort in thinking deeply about how the world works and my place in it (my archetype is a Thinker). It follows that philosophy and science have always been passions.

I wasn’t very clear what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be growing up. I ended up studying Engineering, following my father’s lead and to give myself options. I developed a passion for finance and ended up at a Hedge Fund straight after University. I was there for five years.

I left and did my own thing trading betting markets for a few years before I re-connected with Josh (who was the CEO at the Hedge Fund). He was in the process of thinking about and circulating the Principles that would shortly lead to the birth of elco.

These Principles really resonated and aligned with my own thoughts. The purpose of elco and the idea that I could be in an environment where we collectively solve interesting problems with interesting people was exactly what I was looking for. This was in contrast to a transactional, clock-on, clock-off role, where I was just a cog in a machine. I had known for a while I didn’t want that and was looking for some other path. I saw the contrast as the difference between being intrinsically motivated at elco or more extrinsically motivated elsewhere.

It’s only been around three years, but it’s a journey I’m very grateful to be on.

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I am currently working with Ploomo focused on connecting our products with the world.

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