Cécilia Marcacci, a doctor with a big heart
Cécilia Marcacci was born in Perugia, a small town in central Italy - © Alain Duprat
After a career as a cardiac surgeon at the Centre Cardio-Thoracique, Cécilia Marcacci now practises hair surgery at the Clinique Monte-Carlo, where she is Medical Director.
Cécilia Marcacci received us in between appointments, in her bright, spacious office at the Gildo Pastor Centre clinic. With her light Italian accent and infectious smile, she explains that she travelled a lot for her studies, from Genoa to Barcelona, by way of Strasbourg and New York. During her travels, she specialised in heart transplants and robotic surgery before landing in Monaco through chance meetings, for an internship at the Cardio-Thoracic Centre.
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I’ve always worked in managerial and historically male positions, and I can state that men and women are still treated differently today. I had to work twice as hard to get the same recognition as a man.
Always up for a challenge, and after 10 years as a cardiac surgeon, Cécilia Marcacci decided to move into hair surgery. She obtained two university degrees in just two years, including one from the Sorbonne, and joined the Clinique Monte-Carlo. “I went back to school when I was over 40,” smiles the pretty brunette, who speaks fluent French, English, Spanish and Italian. ” Cotto e mangiato “, she says in her native tongue, a snap decision.
Woman Leader of the Year
A member of the Femmes Leaders Mondiales Monaco (FLMM) association, Cécilia Marcacci was awarded the prize for Female Leader of the Year 2024. “I’m very happy and honoured because I’ve been working in Monaco for over ten years now, and receiving an award in the Principality really means a lot to me. I’ve worked long and hard to achieve my professional success,” she says.
While the prize rewards a career, it also recognises the winner’s human qualities. And there’s no shortage of them in Cécilia Marcacci who, as well as her unfailing upbeat attitude, has always shown humility by staying close to her teams: “for me, the caretaker is as important as my right-hand person in the operating theatre. I think it’s the team that really makes a leader.”
Cécilia Marcacci wanted to bring her personal touch to the organisation and train women to do what she does best: save lives. Every October, around fifty women are invited to the Monaco Yacht Club, where the doctor teaches them how to recognise cardiac arrest, perform cardiac massage and use a defibrillator. She says her aim, as someone who has always had a vocation for helping others, is to take a month out of the year to do humanitarian work. “My patients call me up for everything, even for a stomach ache, and I can’t say no, I’m everyone’s friend and above all the doctor who tries to save everyone,” she laughs.
A taste for challenge
Like her father, Cécilia Marcacci dreamed of being a manager, but a distressing event changed the young woman’s mind. “When my grandfather died of a heart condition, I felt so helpless that I decided to go into heart surgery. I told myself I wanted to save people’s lives, including my father, whose heart I operated on. Once that special operation was over, I felt I had accomplished what I had been made for, and I immediately started looking for a new goal.”
Her latest venture is in hair surgery, where progress is significant: “We have discovered pretty much everything about cardiac surgery, but in aesthetics, there are still a lot of possible evolutions,” says Cécilia Marcacci, who stands out from the dermatologists who usually carry out hair-related procedures, because of her legendary meticulousness. “We have developed a minimally invasive technique that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” she confirms.
Doctors Enrica Segond-Romeo, a cosmetic surgeon specialising in breast (and now capillary) surgery, and Philippe Berros, an ophthalmologist surgeon, founded the clinic – © Clinique Monte-Carlo and Alain Duprat
As a partner and medical director, Cécilia Marcacci helped launch and promote the clinic when it opened to the public in spring 2023. “Our reputation continues to grow, as does our patient waiting list,” the doctor proudly states. In fact the success is such that the clinic will soon be opening a plastic surgery department. “Women, and men too, attach increasing importance to their physique, their calling card. They say clothes don’t make the man, but almost. Today we are living longer and we want to stay as young as possible and maintain our self-esteem. I think we often help people psychologically by removing a complex.”
When asked what her passions are, her first answer is “my work.” But after some thought the hyperactive doctor reveals a sporty side: “exercise helps me let off steam,” says the former captain of the Monaco volleyball team, with which she won a championship. Today, the former champion prefers running and outdoor sports to exercising in the gym. She has also taken an interest in diving, and plays the piano. Very religious, she sees something divine in her love for music. “In Italy we’re big believers in the Saints, and Santa Cecilia is the Saint who protects the musicians, so maybe there is a link? “ she wonders.
A love-life too
Cécilia Marcacci also likes to meet up with her friends who are a mainstay for her here in the Principality, a country she describes as her adopted homeland. “Monaco welcomed me, gave me professional success and a really good life. You know, I won a recruitment competition to head up a large hospital in Milan, and I turned it down. Everybody was surprised, but once you’ve tasted Monaco, it’s hard to leave.”
Especially since Cecilia Marcacci’s heart now belongs to a Monegasque who she married in 2020, at the age of 39. “I dreamed of a ceremony with 500 people in attendance, and ended up getting married, in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, with 15 guests,” she recalls. “My husband is a wonderful man. He supports me, he’s patient. He simply changed my life.” Because for many years, Cécilia Marcacci put her personal life on hold and didn’t have children. “When I was working in the intensive care unit I would start very early and finish late, I could be called at night and on weekends, it wasn’t conducive to family life.”
Cécilia Marcacci now manages to free up more time, because her days in a white coat are lighter. They usually begin with a team meeting, and continue with consultations, care, and operations in theatre from 9 am. Her next project? She doesn’t know for the moment. But one thing is for sure, it is new challenges that keep her going.