Federica Roffi has been working in Research and Innovation related roles for over 20 years. In 2005 she was seconded from the Regional Technological Development Agency of Emilia-Romagna (Italy) to the European Commission, DG RTD, where she worked on policy issues related to Industrial Technologies and later on actions to the benefit of SMEs until 2009. She then moved to the REA (Research Executive Agency) where she continued to work intensively on the FP7 SME programme as Project Adviser, following the entire project cycle management (from the evaluation phase to final payments and de-commitments) and later won a competition to become Operational Head of Sector for one of the Marie Skłodowska Curie actions, namely European Individual Fellowships. In that role she was responsible for the implementation of the Programme, which included call planning, organisation of evaluations, Grant Agreement preparation and project follow-up. She then won another internal competition and since 2015 she has been working as Deputy Head of Unit on the H2020 Science with and for Society work programme and on the Widening actions, in particular on Teaming, Twinning and ERACHAIRS. In 2021, with the launch of Horizon Europe, the new European R&I Framework Programme, the unit became fully dedicated to the new Widening programme with a significant budget increase and a vast array of new actions to implement.