Early Life
Born in New York, United States, John Elkann is the first son of Alain Elkann, a journalist and writer of French and Italian Jewish background, and his then wife Italian Countess Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen, a painter and poet from the Agnelli family. His parents divorced in 1981. Elkann's maternal grandparents were the Italian princess and socialite Marella Agnelli (born Donna Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto) and the industrialist Gianni Agnelli. He has a brother Lapo and a sister, Ginevra, as well as five half siblings from his mother’s second marriage to Serge de Pahlen.
Elkann attended primary school in the UK and in Brazil, before his family moved to Paris, where he obtained a baccalauréat scientifique at the State School Lycée Victor-Duruy in 1994. Later the same year, he moved to Italy to attend the Politecnico di Torino (Turin), where he graduated with a degree in management engineering in 2000. As a result of his international upbringing, he is fluent in four languages.
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