Ciao from Rome! Dear friends, Spring has arrived, the sun is shining on Italy, hope is in our hearts, despite the fact that the pandemic is not over and the war in Ukraine is a cause of great pain and concern for all Italians. This moth we celebrate three round numbers regarding We the Italians.
The first is about the magazine you are reading: this one of April 2022 is the 150th number! That’s why we did a little restyling to our design, thanks to the best of all, our designer Giovanni Vagnone. Up to this moment, we published 2,082 articles in our magazine. No other country would allow such a huge number of excellences to be narrated, Italy is amazing! Always remember that you can also order a hard copy paper version of our magazines, you just have to click on the button “BUY” under the covers, on this page.
The second round number is about our video and audio podcast, We the ItaliaNews: we passed the 300th episode. You will find all of them here (video) and here (audio). Please subscribe to our You Tube channel, you’ll find there much more than We The ItaliaNews!
The third round number is related to our interviews: the tenth year of interviews has just begun, and I went back to my friend Marco Marinucci, who was the first interviewee back in 2013. His 2103 interview is here (back then the first interviews were published only in Italian…) while the new one is here.
A few days ago I was able to arrange a meeting between NIAF President Robert Allegrini, who was visiting Rome, and two friends of We the Italians: Amerigo's President and Founder of the Transtalantic Investing Committee Andrea Gumina and Simest's CEO Mauro Alfonso. Simest is the company of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti Group that has supported the growth of Italian companies since 1991 through the internationalization of their business. New, good and promising things between Italy and the USA were discussed and will come out from this meeting: stay tuned, we’ll tell you everything when they will be ready!
We’re very happy to announce that our friend Fabrizio Fasani has accepted to be We the Italians’ brand new General Director. This is a very important and prestigious step for us. Fabrizio has already started to help us take the next step to becoming bigger and stronger: we are at the beginning of a great revolution for us. Can’t wait!
Once again, our We the Italians’ family keeps growing. We have three new Ambassadors, one for every kind of them: one in a US State, one in an Italian region and one is a “thematic” Ambassador.
Simonetta Milli Kowenko is our Ambassador in Wisconsin, the Badger State. Simonetta is Associate Professor in the Department of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She published Neorealism and the “New” Italy”, Compassion in the development of Italian Identity, L’Italia neorealista. Compassione e identita’nazionale and Around the Dinner Table with Grazia: Food and Cooking in the Work of Grazia Deledda. Her articles appeared, among others, in Forum Italicum, Rivista di Studi Italiani, Holocaust and Modernity, and Sinestesie.
Helga La Nave is our Ambassador in the Italian region Trentino Alto Adige. Helga was born in Trento and lives in Pergine Valsugana: she has been working for more than twenty-five years in cultural programming for the new generations: training activities, shows and events. She is a descendant of Trentino emigrants in America: from the curiosity to know their life she became interested in emigration. She has been a proud member of Associazione Trentini nel Mondo for several years and is now a member of the Board of Directors.
Ennio Tasciotti is our Ambassador to the Scientific World. Dr. Ennio Tasciotti is the Founder and Director of the Human Longevity Program of the IRCCS San Raffaele and a Professor of Biotechnology at the San Raffaele University. Previously he served as the Chairman of the Department of Nanomedicine and as Founder and Director of the Center for Biomimetic Medicine at the Houston Methodist Research Institute and as Director of the Center for Musculoskeletal Regeneration at the Houston Methodist Hospital, one of the top20 hospitals in America. He is considered a pioneer in the field of biomimetic medicine and among the first to exploit the regenerative power of the immune system to repair and regenerate organs and tissues.
Let me remember you that the yearbook of We the Italians is available with the 24 interviews of the past year, both in Italian and English. This is our eighth book: one in English, one in Italian, and six yearbooks like this one, in two languages. In this first month the edition of 2021 has sold much more than the editions of previous years in their first months of release, and this makes me very happy because it rewards the work of all of us. I hope more of you will want to purchase the volume, which you can preview and buy here.
Please don’t forget our virtual store, the perfect place where to buy gifts for your family, your friends and – why not – for yourself! You can find more than 20 products in different colors: t-shirts, tank tops, hoodies, onesies, mugs, notebooks, pillows, totes, tapestries, pins, laptop and smartphone cases, magnets, stickers, masks. Buy We the Italians!
It’s all for this month, please stay safe and take care. We’re working on two welcoming events here in Rome for two different groups of Italian Americans: one in May and one in June. Stay tuned! The future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades! Ciao from Rome
