We The Italians | What's up with WTI: Editorial # 155

What's up with WTI: Editorial # 155

Dear friends, September has come, summer is ending and we have so many things we’re working on!  

One of the two interviews in this month's magazine is with Roberto Sgalla, the Director of the Centro Studi Americani, the home of Italians who love the United States. We the Italians collaborates with this wonderful institution and is partner of the Festival entitled "Gli Italiani in America," (Italians in America) which will tell about many issues we have always addressed in these years. We are very happy with this partnership, and we are already working on a very interesting new project that will involve Centro Studi Americani and the Italian American community.

And speaking of new projects, there's a really exciting one that will be officially announced next month. For now I'll just give you a little preview and post here the logo of the new Italian American Reputation Lab, born from the collaboration between We the Italians and Zwan, which will study the reputation of Italy in the U.S. and of Italian Americans, also thanks to an annual report we're working on right now. Stay tuned, we'll keep you posted!

After a month-long break in August, We the ItaliaNews, the weekly video and audio podcast in which we tell you what is happening in Italy, has begun again. You can find the videos here and the audios here, you can subscribe to the channels on YouTube and/or Spotify and that way you are sure not to miss a single episode.

Our We the Italians’ family keeps growing: we have now Ambassadors in 47 American States, 17 Italian regions and 6 thematic Ambassadors. This month we welcome three friends: two as new Ambassadors, one as part of our staff in Rome. And there’s more We thought that in larger States it is possible to need more than one Ambassador, because it is so much distance to cover. So in California, besides our wonderful Ambassador Mariella Salvatori who is in Los Angeles, from this month we have another wonderful friend who represents us in Northern California, in San Francisco.

Isabella Weiss di Valbranca is our new Ambassador in San Francisco. Isabella was born in Rome, and after graduating in Law, a Common Law course in London and practicing as a lawyer, she became a freelance journalist and also worked for Rai International, covering cinema. She later moved to the U.S. and began a director and producer. Isabella also holds a Master's degree in Business Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and has always been active in the Italian community in San Francisco. Since last December, she has been elected president of San Francisco's Com.It.Es (the Committee of Italians Abroad).

Delfina Licata is our new Ambassador regarding Emigration. Delfina is a sociologist of migration at the Fondazione Migrantes of the Italian Bishops' Conference. Curator of the Rapporto Italiani nel mondo (Italians in the World Report), she coordinated the Dizionario enciclopedico delle migrazioni italiane nel mondo (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Italian Migration in theWorld) (2014). She is a member of the scientific commission of the Festivaldella migrazione di Modena, of the book series Storia dell'emigrazione italiana in Europa (Donzelli, 2022) and the technical commission on Root tourism at the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Author, in 2022, for Donzelli of the book L'Italia e i figli del vento.

Letizia La Sorte is our new Event Coordinator here in Rome. Letizia was born and raised in Sicily. She has a double degree in International Affairs and Political Science from John Cabot University. She is always been interested in being able to merge Italian and American culture, and travelled abroad to California when she was 15 years old, after her return to Italy a couple of years later, she moved back to the States, where she also studied at the University of Miami. She really likes the idea of moving back and forth from the U.S. to Italy, she thinks it’s the best way to merge both cultures, professionally and personally.

Let me remember you 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. Ciao from Rome