Marcello Foa was born on September 30, 1963, in Milan, but grew up in Lugano. A graduate in political science from the University of Milan, he began his career in 1984 in Lugano, at the Gazzetta Ticinese, and then in 1987 at the Giornale del Popolo, two Ticino newspapers.

He joined the Order of Journalists in Italy as a professional journalist and covered the German unification process and was often in Moscow, where he witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, until 2008.

In 2004, he founded with Stephan Russ-Mohl the European Journalism Observatory at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the University of Italian Switzerland (USI), an institute that aims to promote quality in journalism and establish bridges between publishing and academia and between different journalistic cultures in Europe. The Observatory received the 2005 Media Award as the best Swiss research institute from the Verein Qualität im Journalismus (Association for Quality in Journalism).

For several years since 2004, he has taught courses in journalism and communication at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels. He currently teaches “Communication and Media in International Relations” at USI.

For several years, he taught courses in international journalism at the master’s program in journalism at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan and also taught courses in the master’s program in journalism at the Università degli Studi in Milan and, to this day, in the journalism courses of the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. For more than a decade, he has been regularly invited to participate in academic conferences and give lectures and talks.

Since 2016, he has sat on the board of WEMF, the research institute that surveys and certifies circulation and readership of all Swiss newspapers, representing the Association of Publishers of Italian-speaking Switzerland, Press Switzerland.

In the course of his journalistic career, he has collaborated with various radio and television stations, including BBC Radio (for which he was a contributor from Italy for a decade), Rai Radio 3, Rai 1, RSI, and has participated in many radio and television programs both in Italy (Rai 2, Rai Radio 1, Radio 24, Channel 5, Italia 1, Rete 4, La7) and abroad (CNBC, BBC, Russia Today, Arté).

On September 26, 2018, he officially became Rai president and after his three-year stint as Rai president ended, he hosts Giù la maschera on Rai Radio 1.