People

Joe Zavaglia is a native Seattleite, having graduated from O'Dea High School, Seattle University with a degree in Business Administration, and Western Washington University with a Master Degree in Education. He is a descendant of Italian parents and grandparents who immigrated from Tufara, San Marco la Catola, and Mammola. Joe also serves on the Pete Gross House board, the board of Pacific Coast Banking School, various committees at Seattle University, and is past state president of the board for the March of Dimes where he served for 15 years. Joe has been part of the ever evolving NW banking community for over 32 years.

Joe Bisacca - Born and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, Joseph Bisacca founded the Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle in 1996 after 10 years in banking (commercial lending and retail banking). Elysian operates three restaurants (Greenlake, Capitol Hill and next to Qwest Field) and distributes it's
products throughout the west coast. Joe is the decendant of grand and great
grandparents from Sienna and Naples. He is also a dual citizen of the US and Italy.

Ralph Chiocco is currently the treasurer of the Italian Studies board. He is an Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Elliott Cove Capital Management, a local Seattle headquartered Investment Advisory firm. Ralph has worked in banking and finance since 1996 and is married with one daughter. Ralph is the descendant of Southern Italian Grandparents from Tricarico and Villarosa, Sicily. He has served on various non-profit boards and committees in the US and throughout Latin America and devotes a great deal of his charitable time to serving the Order of Malta.

Arianna Ciccu is from the beautiful sunny island of Sicily in Southern Italy. She moved to Perugia where she received a Master's degree in Communication Science in 2007. After graduating, she worked as a web TV journalist while at the same time teaching Italian to foreigners. She has always been passionate about her language, culture and the processes of communication. After University, the desire to understand people brought Arianna to attend a course in Psychological Counseling and Counseling Techniques. This course helped her to better understand her students and made teaching especially attractive after she moved to the U.S. She is lucky because through teaching, she gets to pass on her passion for her language and culture to others. Arianna loves working with other people, she loves inspiring them to learn and seeing the results. There's no better feeling than seeing one of your students finally "get it". Arianna uses an integrative approach to language learning. All skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) are taught holistically and in an interactive manner. Her hobbies are traveling and cooking as well as inventing fantastic Italian recipes.

Maria Coassin

Chris Landman serves as Development Director for the Arts and Humanities at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Giuseppe Leporace received the "Laurea" in Lettere e Filosofia from the University of Salerno, Italy, in 1984, and an M.A. in Italian Literature from the UW in 1989. His area of expertise is Italian language pedagogy and translation. He currently is the Italian language program coordinator. He also enjoys creative writing and a collection of his short stories has been submitted for publication to Pellegrini Editore (CS) in Italy. Giuseppe Leporace's translation project on renowned contemporary poet Amelia Roselli, has been published by Yale Italian Poetry and Columbia Italian Poetry Review. Many of his other translation projects appeared in: Chelsea Review; Spoon River Poetry Review and “The Poem and the World” anthology of poetry. Currently he is the author of a translation in Italian of the complete works of American Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner Mark Strand to be soon submitted for publication.

Claudio Mazzola received his "Laurea" in English from the University of Milan in 1981. He also received a degree in cinema studies from the City University of Milan. Claudio went on to receive a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington in 1986. His area of expertise is Contemporary Italian fiction and Italian Cinema. He has published a number of articles on those topics. He has also published a reader for third year student entitled Racconti Regionali (Prentice-Hall, 1990) and a second year grammar book, Insieme (McGraw-Hill, 1995). Before joining the University of Washington he taught at the University of Michigan, Vassar College and the College of the Holy Cross.

John Norden is a 3rd generation Seattlelite growing up in West Seattle where he graduated from West Seattle High School. A Business and Economics graduate of Seattle Pacific University he started his career as an Executive Trainee with Sears Roebuck and Company where he became a Department Manager and was then promoted to the Assistant Advertising Managers position in early 1973. In 1976 John was hired by KIRO TV/CBS and became an Account Executive selling commercial television time in the Seattle region. In 1978 John was promoted to Regional Sales Manager, 1980 to National Sales Manager/VP National Sales Manager and in 1986 to VP General Sales Manager. Later in his career is worked as a Senior Account Manager and in 2006 retired from KIRO TV after a 30 plus year career. In 2006 and 2007 John became a Tour Director for A Cooks Tour, hosting cooking and wine tours to Italy, France and the Napa Valley. John is a consultant for some locally owned companies and works with the University of Washington's television group as a sales and marketing consultant. John sits on the board of directors of Senior Services for Seattle/King County and as the VP of its executive board. He joined the board of the Italian Studies Department of the UW in 2011. John is a Navy veteran serving in Viet Nam (Da Nang/Chu Lai) in 1967-68. He lives with his partner Mary Jean in West Seattle. He has a son Brennan who lives in Alaska and was a rookie musher in the 2011 Iditarod Dog Sled Race
An avid golfer, reader, chef and gardner he keeps himself busy around his
home in West Seattle. John's grandfather Giovanni Di Giuseppe was born in Pescara, Italy and has family there and in San Remo.

Adriana Paetzke graduated from the University of Washington and has been teaching at the UW for over ten years. Previously, she owned and directed an Italian language school for three years where she taught Italian in continuing education North Seattle Community College. Her Italian family origin is from Puglia, Lecce.

Fiore Pignataro

Elisabetta Ruggeri Regio was born and raised in Italy where she married her husband, Mauro. They live in Bellevue with their two children, Claudia and Alessandro. She is currently the Owner and Manager of Italian Dream Vacation, a travel agency specializing in customized travel to Europe and Italy. Elisabetta holds a degree as Fashion Designer from the Accademia D'Alta Moda Luigi Cataldo in Rome. She has volunteered in the past as Developer for Non-Profit Organizations and is a certified Non Profit Organization Management Consultant. She has been enjoying teaching Italian Grammar and Culture for the Continuing Education Program at Bellevue Community College over the last 3 years.

Albert Sbragia arrived at the University of Washington in 1989. He is the Chair of French & Italian Studies, Associate Professor of Italian Studies, member of the Cinema Studies program in the Department of Comparative Literature, and a faculty member of the European Studies program. His publications include a book, Carlo Emilio Gadda and the Modern Macaronic (University Press of Florida, 1996), and publications on 19th Century and 20th Century Italian literature and culture. His current research project is entitled "Modernity in Rome" and deals with urbanistic, literary, and visual constructions of the Italian capital from 1870 to the present. He also teaches in the Italian Studies program at the UW Center in Rome.

Ruggero Taradel is a Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Washington.

Giuseppe Tassone is a native of Gioiosa Jonica, Italy. Before moving to Seattle, he studied at the University of Siena and lived in the area for six years. He joined the University of Washington in 1997, where he has been teaching elementary and intermediate Italian for the past decade. In recent years, he has taught Italian at several colleges and non-profit organizations as part of his commitment to promoting the language and culture of Italy. He has developed several Italian programs for business, study, and travel in Italy. Giuseppe Tassone is the director of the Italian Language Program of the Dante Alighieri Society of Washington at Seattle University and a member of the American Association of Teachers of Italian. He lives in West Seattle with his wife and two daughters, who are all fluent in both English and Italian.

Terry Tazioli is the host for Well Read, a weekly author interview show produced by TVW and KBTC in Washington State. He also writes for Health Advocacy Strategies in Seattle. He is the former editor for Travel and Scene at The Seattle Times. He's a native Seattleite, and graduated from O'Dea High School and the University of Washington (and later the University of Missouri in Columbia). Prior to The Times, Tazioli was a producer and assignment editor for KING 5 news. Except for short stints in Washington, D.C., and Colorado he's lived in Seattle all his life. His grandparents, Amelia Pellegrini and Leonildo Tazioli, emigrated from Tuscany and met and married in the Northwest.

Anna Tucci-Ringstad

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