Dear friends,
2024 has been another year full of very interesting people, topics, meetings for us at We the Italians.
The eleventh book, the ninth annual yearbook, is available for you: a nice Christmas gift, with the twelve interviews from 2024 on twelve different topics that have in common Italy and the United States. We hope you will buy and give it as a gift in large numbers! On this page, you will find a preview and the link to purchase it.
Just like 2022 and 2023, also in 2024 we wanted to name the Italian American of the year, now a pleasant tradition for We the Italians! Stanley Tucci was the 2022 winner, and Sylvester Stallone won last year. Once again, this year we asked all of you, and once again, we had a great response!
As in 2023, this year too we decided not to make a shortlist within which to choose, just leaving out the winners of the two last years. We left it free to vote. Putting together all the 9,659 votes we received, the podium for the Italian American of 2024 is as follows. According to We the Italians' readers, number three of 2024 is Ron DeSantis. Number two is Tommy DeVito. Number one, the Italian American of 2024 according to you all, is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga. Congrats to her!
The long list of events we have organized or in which we have had the honor of participating ended at the splendid home of those in Rome who promote friendship between Italy and the United States: the Centro Studi Americani. There we had the pleasure of briefly recounting the relationship between the publishing that we do for the Italian American community and new technologies, starting with the most promising and controversial: artificial intelligence. As you know, thanks to artificial intelligence this year we started the first space on the metaverse dedicated to Italian Americans, and our new podcast that turns each of our interviews into a conversation between two people. In 2025 we will continue on this path.
The year 2025 will bring us into the new phase of We the Italians. Thanks to artificial intelligence we will in fact produce a daily audio with the news we think is the most interesting, for those who are unable to read it on the screen. These daily podcasts will be on our channel on Spotify, part of the subscription section, which will also contain links to the same news, and some other content produced by We the Italians. We will start with subscriptions on our Facebook page, pending a redesign of our website that will take place before Spring: in addition, all our other social media accounts (Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Telegram, Threads, YouTube, and Tik Tok) will enter into a coordinated strategy to allow us to increase the number of We the Italians' engagement, which in any case already in 2024 on the Facebook page alone has already reached 8 million views. Subscriptions will be very few dollars per month (less than what you spend for your espressos in one week…), with the possibility of a discount for those who subscribe annually. We know that our readers will support us in this new phase, which will help us improve and give you even more information.
Also, we have activated two chats among our Ambassadors, one for those in Italy and another for those in the United States, because from 2025 we will be more active in involving them and helping them to take We the Italians even higher. They are wonderful people, and we are really very grateful to them for what they do.
And, speaking about our Ambassadors, we’re very happy to welcome a new member in our beautiful family: Angelo Cassaro is our new Ambassador in Nevada. Angelo is a proud third generation Sicilian decent. He has been owning and operating a general contracting and development company and plumbing company for the past 45 years. He has been recently renewed as President of the Italian American Club of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, a role he has had for18 years. Angelo is a current member of NIAF and District Vice President of the Conference of Presidents of the Major Italian American Organizations (COPOMIAO).
We want to end our 2024 with a video, regarding one of the projects we were most excited about in this year: Salerno-Verona, History of the American Fifth Army in Italy, the non-competitive bike ride to the most significant places for the route of the Fifth Army that liberated our country. Here is the video of this wonderful adventure, We the Italians and I personally were very proud of being partners of this.
It’s all for now. Please stay safe and take care, and enjoy our magazine and our contents on our website. May you all spend a wonderful Italian Christmas, we’ll meet again in 2025 because the future’s so bright, we gotta wear tricolor shades! A big Italian hug from Rome.
