WIPO Alumni Spotlight: Sofia Ludovica Barabino
December 6, 2021
WIPO Academy alumna Sofia Ludovica Barabino is one of the many success stories of the Academy’s Joint Master’s Degree Programs on intellectual property (IP).
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Ever since she was a young student, people have been asking Sofia what she wanted to do with her life and her answer has always been to work for an office of the European Union. Nowadays, Sofia’s career goals are her reality as she works at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in Alicante, Spain.
Sofia graduated in 2014 from University of Genoa in her home country of Italy with a Master’s Degree in Law, and spent the first five years of her career working at the IP and Technology Department of the DLA Piper law firm in Milan. She decided to apply for the Master of Laws (LL.M.) in IP, offered jointly by the WIPO Academy and the University of Turin with the support of the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (ITC-ILO), that she was able to attend thanks to a scholarships offered by the DLA Piper law firm. She enrolled in the LL.M. and despite the challenge of juggling her studies and work at the firm at the same time, she graduated in 2019.
It was a great opportunity to meet new people from all over the world at the ITC-ILO Campus in Turin, and it also enabled me to develop a resourceful professional network which is very helpful to have. Academically, the LL.M. added value to my CV and gave me a plethora of technical knowledge on IP, as it is a technically excellent program.
Sofia Ludovica Barabino, Legal Assistant, Boards of Appeal, EUIPO
Career shift
She particularly enjoyed the study visit to WIPO where she met professionals who handle IP matters on a daily basis and this inspired to change her career path. Towards the end of her LL.M., Sofia applied for the Pan-European Seal Traineeship at the EUIPO in Spain thinking it would be a good chance to start a new chapter in a different country. She was accepted as a trainee at the Boards of Appeal of the EUIPO and eight months later she started to work as an IP Senior External Consultant in the International Cooperation and Legal Affairs Department of the EUIPO, before landing her current role of IP Legal Specialist at the Boards of Appeal at the end of 2020.
Interested in pursuing higher education in IP?
The WIPO Academy Joint Master’s Degrees on IP, are year-long programs offered in cooperation with selected academic institutions in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Latin America. Scholarships are available to qualified nationals from relevant public sector institutions and universities in developing countries, least-developed countries and countries with economies in transition. Participants can follow programs in English, French and Spanish.
To learn from our alumni and their experiences, please connect to our growing alumni community on LinkedIn by joining the WIPO Academy’s official “Academy Community”.