Enrica D’Ettorre received  the “Laurea” degree in Computer Science from the University of Pisa, magna cum laude, in 1974. After her graduation, she held a full-time research position at CNUCE, an institute of the National Research Council.  In 1977 she obtained a post-doc position at the IBM Scientific Center in Palo Alto, CA, USA, to work on relational databases for personal computers until 1979.

Over the past 40 years Enrica D’Ettorre has continued to work in high-tech. In 2008 she was part of the founding team of DigitalPersona, a company focused on fingerprint recognition, authentication, identity management, and security. From 2002 to 2012, she was part of the DigitalPersona leadership team as VP of Software Engineering and Research, with the responsibility for product strategy and development for the consumer, enterprise, and developer product lines. The DigitalPersona products were adopted by Microsoft, HP and Dell.  The fingerprint recognition engine was a state-of-the-art engine for embedded applications utilized in laptops and smart phones.

Enrica D’Ettorre is actively involved in pro-bono work. She has been a Board member of the Italian Scientists and Scholars of North America Foundation (ISSNAF) since 2018, and vice-chair of the Board as of 11/22/2019.  She co-founded the ISSNAF Bay Area Chapter in 2017, and she serves as a Board member and Governance Committee Chair. Since 2016, she is a member of the board of La Scuola International School in San Francisco, currently chair of the Governance Committee.