Pinuccia was born in Catania (Italy), where she graduated with a degree in International Politics in 1990. She joined the European Commission a year later. After spending a short period in the interpretation service, she became an administrator in the Erasmus unit and subsequently in the Tempus unit, where she was responsible for the Tempus/Phare programme. In 2000, she was selected to be part of the newly set-up Strategic Planning and Programming unit in the Secretariat-General, where she laid the basis for the performance management system of the Institution. In 2004 she joined the Cabinet of Mr Busquin, Commissioner responsible for Research, and subsequently moved to the Cabinet of Commissioner Figel, in charge of education, training, culture and youth. Pinuccia's portfolio covered, among other things, lifelong learning policy and universities, including the Erasmus programme. From May 2009 to the end of 2012, Pinuccia was Head of Unit DGT.S.3 "Multilingualism and translation studies" in the Directorate-General for Translation. In particular, she launched the European network of excellence for masters in translation (EMT) and developed the Juvenes Translatores contest for schools. Between January 2013 and December 2016, Pinuccia was Head of Communications, first in the same Directorate-General, then in the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers. She was responsible for internal and external communications, social media, press contacts, and communication projects in the fields of civil and criminal law, fundamental rights, equality and consumer rights. Since January 2017 Pinuccia has been in charge of consumer product safety and the EU Rapid Alert System for non-food dangerous products. She has developed several aspects in this field: product safety of online sales, international cooperation, safety and security of connected objects and joint market surveillance activities.