Tonelli was born in Biella, but left Italy at a young age on an athletic scholarship to pursue a professional career in the US and then Australia, where he eventually acquired dual citizenship.

[2] In 2010 he started working at the Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research (ACE) under the leadership of professor Per Davidsson and got involved in the international-collaborative GEM project,[3] which ignited his interest in how entrepreneurial opportunities are sought and perceived in contexts of poverty (bottom of the pyramid).

At that time he started favouring the design and testing of entrepreneurial approaches that could help alleviating poverty[4] and guarantee the effectiveness of microcredit schemes overtime.

[10] The book discusses a variety of problematic settings in the Fourth World – with a strong emphasis on locations visited by the author during a two-year period of ethnographic studies – explaining how proper training in entrepreneurship and innovation can empower individuals and therefore contribute to community advancement.

In the M45 age group he set three world records, ratified by the International Life Saving Federation, in the 200m obstacle swim[18][19] and the 100m rescue medley.