Profiles

Starting at age 5 as a dancer and now as dance director for nearly 30 years, Mark DeSanctis has invested a great deal of time, energy and resources into his volunteer work with the Milwaukee-based nonprofit dance group Tradizione Vivente. None of it ever felt like a burden, DeSanctis says. “It is a labor of love,” he explains. “The reward is seeing our traditions continue, watching our kids grow into adult dancers, seeing audiences connect with their heritage, and knowing that something meaningful is being passed from one generation to the next.” Founded in 1945 in Milwaukee, Tradizione Vivente’s repertoire …

San Rocco has been a part of Frank DeFrenza’s life from his childhood in Italy through his adult life in the Chicago area. DeFrenza was born in 1946 in Valenzano, a town outside Bari, Puglia, where San Rocco is the patron saint. “They say because of him the plague didn’t touch Valenzano,” DeFrenza says. San Rocco was a 14th-century French noble who gave away his wealth to live as a pilgrim, miraculously healing plague victims across Italy. After contracting the plague himself, he was saved by a hunting dog that brought him food and licked his wounds in a forest …

For Dr. Veena Carlson, a month-long student exchange trip to Italy as a teenager sparked an interest that eventually launched her career. Today, Carlson is in her 30th year teaching Italian at Dominican University. However, when she first traveled to Italy in 1983, she didn’t speak a word of Italian. Carlson grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, where her parents settled after immigrating to the United States from India in 1965. Although she doesn’t have Italian roots, languages have fascinated her from a young age. “I was always interested in languages,” Carlson says. “Because my parents were immigrants from India, I …

Well-known in the larger Italian-American community, he has emerged as a passionate advocate for the region of his birth. When it comes to celebrating and advocating for the beautiful Italian region of Puglia, few in this country can say they’ve dedicated as much time and energy to the cause as Pasquale “Pat” Capriati. A member of the Ufficio di Presidenza del Consiglio Generale dei Pugliesi nel Mondo, president of the Federazione Regione Puglia Chicago, co-founder of Associazione Regionale Pugliese d’America and co-founder and first president of the Confederation of Pugliese Organizations in North America, Capriati has embarked on innumerable projects …

The son of American and Italian professors who taught in Zurich during his youth, Alex Hall was perfectly positioned to embrace and eventually excel in slopestyle, the relatively new event in freestyle skiing. The 2026 Winter Olympics were an opportunity for Italians to showcase their country and the majesty of the Italian Alps to athletes around the world. For Team USA’s Alex Hall, the 2026 Milan Cortina Games were also an opportunity to connect with his Italian heritage. Hall was born in Alaska but grew up in Switzerland where his father, an American from Salt Lake City, and mother, an …

During a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Joseph D’Addosio was frequently in the line of fire as he traveled from base to base to maintain crucial equipment. Joseph D’Addosio was born in Chicago and lived with his mother, aunts, uncles and maternal grandparents, Joseph and Maria D’Addosio. He grew up in the Uptown area until moving to Schiller Park with his parents, David and Tina (D’Addosio) Ball, when he was a teenager. As a young child, D’Addosio spoke fluent Italian, which he learned from his grandparents, who had emigrated from Capurso in Bari, Italy. The oldest of six children and …

Carla Bruni, a professor at the School of the Art Institute Chicago and preservation specialist for the Chicago Bungalow Association, loves everyday stuff that people don’t notice or find particularly interesting. That’s why she wanted to celebrate “everyday” architecture in the book “Chicago Homes: A Portrait of the City’s Everyday Architecture,” which she co-authored with illustrator Phil Thompson. Published last year, the book features nearly 200 illustrations by Thompson, an artist and owner of Wonder City Studio, who also wrote the first four chapters of the book. A preservation and sustainability consultant specializing in community engagement and resiliency, Bruni teaches …

John Galluzzi first joined the San Rocco di Potenza Society around 20 years ago after learning of their mission: To care for the poor and sick like the saint the group is devoted to. “The men and women in the society are all pointed toward the same thing, continuing to honor and venerate San Rocco,” Galluzzi says. After years as a member, Galluzzi was asked to accept the responsibility of being the group’s president. “It’s just a tremendous honor,” Galluzzi says. “I don’t think I really deserve it, I think there’s a lot of people who could do it.” San …

After nearly two decades in the classroom, Laura Calo still speaks about teaching with the same enthusiasm she had as a child pretending to run her own classroom in Italy. Her journey from playing make believe in a small Pugliese town to leading classes in Italian and Spanish in a Chicago suburb has been shaped by the forces of immigration and culture, and a lifelong passion for education. Calo was born in Chicago, but when she was only a year and a half old, her family moved back to their hometown of Mola di Bari. She spent the next nine …

Little known outside of Cleveland, the Italian Cultural Garden has been celebrating Italy’s contribution to the world on a grand scale for nearly a century. Michelangelo, Vinci, Dante, Galileo, Marconi, Virgil, Palladio, Giotto, Petrarch, Verdi, Ovidio, Donatello, Bernini. Outside of Cleveland, not many know that a monument honoring these Italian greats is located in the city’s Rockefeller Park. Their statues and carved images are immortalized in the Italian Cultural Garden, a Renaissance-style monument listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Dedicated in 1930, this public space was the center of Italian activities in Cleveland in the 1930s and 1940s. …