Board of Directors 

Chair of the Board, Executive Committee

Dr. Annelise Brody Morani

Annelise received her laurea in comparative literature at the university of Bologna with a thesis on Dante and the Rossetti family. She received also her MA and Ph.D in Italian literature from the JHU with a thesis on Virginity in Early Italian literature. She then went on teaching as a faculty member at various college institutions joining Washington University in Saint Louis in 2005 where she taught Italian language, literature and cinema at all levels. She also served as language coordinator until 2018. She developed and taught online language courses as a winner of a grant in language and technology research at her institution (2014) She became proficient in using both Blackboard and Canvas platforms.

Her main research interest is in Medieval Italian literature and in particular in literature and ethics. She published papers on Petrarch and Boccaccio, presented at numerous conferences.

Annelise is also a passionate yoga practitioner and a certified yoga instructor in Hatha yoga and ELDOA 1&2. She has been teaching yoga to dancers, children as well as seniors. Her focus is on improving mobility and spinal health.

Executive Director & CEO, Executive Committee

Francesca Casazza

Francesca Casazza was born in Genoa, Italy and holds a MA in Economics and Business Administration from Università di Genova. She has been the Director of the Italian Language Program for 4 years. Since September 2017, she also manages the cultural programs, the scholarship programs, communication, marketing and finance of the Society. She has worked in multinational enterprises in Spain, France and Italy for more than six years. Francesca speaks English, Spanish and French and has a basic knowledge of German as well. After her MBA, she has continued to educate herself in Italian language and culture with ICoN (Italian Culture on the Net), an online university program. She started her Italian teaching career in France and at University of Colorado in Boulder in 2003. Francesca has taught Italian in Spain, at the University of Maryland, at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University, at Montgomery College, at Casa Italiana Language School and in the Italian Language Program of the ICS. Francesca and her family live in Chevy Chase, MD.

Treasurer, Executive Committee

Bruce Esposito

Bruce joined the Italian Cultural Society in August 2009 and became Treasurer in September 2017.  A Maryland native, Bruce attended the University of Maryland, receiving a Master of Business Administration degree with concentrations in finance and accounting and a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting.  After spending the initial part of his career in public accounting, primarily at Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) where he was a Senior Engagement Manager, Bruce has worked since 1994 for a private real estate investment company based in Rockville, Maryland.  Bruce served as the company’s chief financial officer for 21 years, until he stepped down in 2015.  He now serves on a part-time basis as a Senior Vice President overseeing special projects and handling various tax matters.  Bruce was a Certified Public Accountant, but is now inactive.

Bruce enjoys extensive visits to Italy and has been taking Italian language courses through ICS for several years.

Events & Communication

Sara Forden

I lived in Milano for more than 22 years, during which time I reported for The International Herald Tribune, Women’s Wear Daily, Dow Jones and Bloomberg, where I am currently an editor leading legal coverage out of Washington D.C. In Italy, I also covered Fiat’s bid to turn around Chrysler under the late Sergio Marchionne.

In 2000 I published “The House of Gucci,” with Harper Collins, recounting the family saga behind the story of one of fashion’s most powerful brands. The book is the basis of Ridley Scott’s 2021 movie starring Lady Gaga as Patrizia Gucci. I also launched an Italian women’s magazine with Class Editori, wrote weekly columns in Italian on the state of the luxury goods industry, and was a regular commentator on Class TV. My Italian years started in Bologna in 1986, where I studied for an MA in Economics and International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

After moving back to Washington, I wanted to stay connected with Italian language and culture and was very happy to discover ICS and be invited to join the Board, where I have served over the past six years. During this time I helped secure the honorary guests for our 2017 Gala featuring Italian Fashion and Design, and 2022 Gala inviting Domenico De Sole. I have come to regard the ICS as a true treasure, and I hope to continue helping it to prosper in the future.

Membership

Salvatore Romano

In the early 1900’s, my father’s parents emigrated from Naples and my mother’s parents emigrated from Cesa which is in the Province of Caserta, Campania, Italy. My parents were both born in Brooklyn as was I. My parents met and married in Brooklyn.

I attended The City College of New York where I acquired a Bachelor’s in Science in meteorology and then Rutgers University where I acquired a Master’s in Science in meteorology. Upon graduating from Rutgers University, I relocated to the Washington D.C. region to work at the National Weather Service Headquarters. I retired two years ago, after working as a meteorologist for 35 years.

I am very impressed with the Italian Cultural Society’s (ICS) Italian Language Program from which I’ve taken classes for many years. Shortly after I retired, I began volunteering at ICS to provide assistance at the annual social events and to compose and send out the ICS membership emails that contain the annual membership cards. During my work career, I wrote and reviewed many documents and have developed good writing skills that I’ve been applying in the review of the ICS Poche Parole. I am proud to now be a new member of the ICS Board.

Cultural Programs & Fundraising

Melitta Paterni

Melitta Paterni is the director and founder of the company Melitta P. LLC which promotes and
distributes various categories of luxury clothing made in Italy in the American market. From
Tuscany, but based in Washington, she graduated in contemporary history and has worked in the
fashion sector since 2002. She started as an editor in Milan for Cosmopolitan Italia magazine and then moved to New York where she collaborated as a coordinator of fashion services for the weekly magazine D of Repubblica. She oversaw the styling of several advertising campaigns including the worldwide campaign for Bulgari and United Colors of Benetton.

Ms. Paterni helped strengthen the ICS by bringing to the Board her specializations in the fashion and business sector, and the social network built over the course of twenty years of specialization in the field of Italian and American fashion, as well as her passions and cultural knowledge.

Communication & Finance

Phil Contrino

Secretary

Camilla Acquista

Camilla Acquista’s paternal grandparents emigrated in 1916 from Racalmuto, Agrigento, Sicily, to New York City, and her father was born in Manhattan in 1919. Camilla was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Bethesda, MD, just a short walk from ICS. 

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, Camilla served for 10 years as a Personnel Management Specialist at the National Institutes of Health, where she gained extensive experience writing reports and managing personnel matters.

While home raising her two daughters, Camilla enjoyed volunteering extensively at their schools. Based on her skills and interest in writing and editing, she was invited in 2016 to edit publications for Dance ICONS, Inc.—a nonprofit global network for choreographers—and has been executive editor ever since. 

Simultaneously, her major project was editing the recently published comprehensive textbook You, the Choreographer, Creating and Crafting Dance, August 2023, Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Camilla collaborated extensively with the author during the book proposal, writing, editing, and publication processes. She had major responsibility for reorganizing and rewriting sections of the entire book throughout numerous drafts and revisions; fact-checking; and advising the author. 

Camilla learned of ICS from the De Luca family, who are family friends, and she first took classes with Silvana De Luca in 2008. During the pandemic, Camilla resumed her Italian classes and was honored to be invited in spring 2023 to join the ICS Board as secretary. Volunteering at ICS not only taps into her writing and editing skills and her desire to make a contribution, but also enables her to feed her passion for the Italian language and culture, instilled in her by her father, who deeply cherished his Sicilian heritage.

Secretary

Anne Marie Cammisa

Anne Marie Cammisa is the Director of the Master’s in American Government program at Georgetown University.  She holds a Master’s in Public Policy and a PhD in American Government from Georgetown University and a BA in History from the University of Virginia. Dr. Cammisa has been a Research Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University and an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow.  Her published works include The Path of American Public Policy: Comparative Perspectives (co-authored with Paul C. Manuel), which examines the U.S. political system in cultural and historical context.  Dr. Cammisa has worked with scholars from other countries (including Italy) in research on comparative parliamentary systems. She often gives lectures explaining the American political system to foreign visitors through the State Department’s International Visiting Leadership Program (IVLP). Her interest in Italian culture began in her grandmother’s lap, as Nonny would sing and recite rhymes to her Anna Maria in Italian. The Italian Cultural Society of Washington has been part of Anne Marie’s life for almost as long as she can remember.  Her father, Guido Cammisa, was a long-time member of ICS (including serving as its treasurer), and she remembers perusing Poche Parole as a child, and taking Italian classes as a young adult with the encouragement of her father, who introduced her to the great Maria Wilmeth. As her eldest daughter left for college, Anne Marie reconnected with the Italian Cultural Society; the connection solidified during Covid lockdown, when online Italian classes were a refreshing escape to the wonderful language, culture, art and history of Italy. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband Paul Manuel, and Amica the dog.  Their daughter Maria Manuel is a schoolteacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and their daughter Rosa Manuel is a graduate student in Museum Studies at Georgetown University. Anne Marie loves Italian food and wine (especially wines from her family’s region of Puglia).  She loves bringing back childhood memories by cooking favorite Italian specialties from her family’s recipes.  It is her great honor to serve on the ICS board and help its mission of promoting Italian language and culture in the United States.

Secretary

Dorothea Dickerman

A Washington, DC native, Dorothea Dickerman joined the ICS in 2017. With two Italian grandparents and five cousins born and raised in Rome, Dorothea had always been exposed to Italian, but never studied it until within a few months of her retirement as a partner from a large international law firm, when she realized that it was absolutely essential to what she wanted to do next. With mediocre skills in French and rusty Latin, she cautiously enrolled in introductory Italian grammar at the A-1 level and became instantly hooked on it, the ICS’s broad array of Italian cultural events and opportunities and the warm environment created by its staff and faculty.

Dorothea received her undergraduate degree with highest honors from Amherst College in English and Political Science and her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. Her legal practice career, of over 3 decades, focused on commercial real estate transactions across the US for national and international developers, owners, lenders and tenants in multi-use complex projects, as well as workouts of troubled real estate assets.

She now researches, writes and lectures on 16th century English history and literature, with specific focus on how the 14th and 15th century Italian literary Renaissance pollinated the Elizabethan English literature in the 16th century. To that end, studying the great works of Italian Renaissance literature with the amazing faculty at the ICS in the original text has been an endless source of joy and a foundation of learning for her work, which you can find on YouTube, Instagram, and online through her website: https://www.dorotheadickerman.com/  

Dorothea also serves on another not-for-profit board, the Shakespeare-Oxford Fellowship, for which she became a trustee in 2021. She and her husband, Rich, an historian and fellow retired attorney, enjoy tennis, golf and travelling throughout Europe (including to Italy with the ICS), as well as Africa and Asia. They reside in Naples, Florida. Two long-haired dachshunds, named Gandalf and Arwen Evenstar, keep Dorothea strictly on schedule. 

Vice President

Prof. Lavinia Fici Pasquina

Born in Italy, Prof. Lavinia Fici Pasquina is an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America’s School of Architecture & Planning, where she directs the Technology and Media in Architecture and Interiors (TMAIN) Graduate Concentration. She holds a master’s degree in Architecture summa cum laude from Palermo, Italy, and a second master’s from CUArch, where she earned the AIA Henry Adams Medal and the Paul A. Goettelman award for best thesis.

Lavinia has led transformative architectural design studios, exposing students to international projects in Italy, France, and Malta. Her Rome-based programs have explored themes like sustainability, wine museums, and inhabitable bridges, with exhibits showcased at the Italian Embassy in Washington, DC. She co-led the design and construction of a meditation space in Pantelleria, Italy, blending mythological and vernacular influences, later featured in a documentary.

Professionally, Lavinia has worked on large-scale government and commercial projects, custom residential designs, and innovative restoration projects. In 2024, she founded Mareterranea, focusing on converting vernacular shelters in Pantelleria into sustainable micro-units. Her work has been featured in Elle Décor, Abitare, and on the Discovery Channel.

Her dedication to exploring architecture’s narrative and cultural dimensions continues to inspire students to create designs that merge creativity, technology, and sustainability.

Member At Large

Dr. Romeo Segnan

Romeo Segnan was born in Fiume. The family settled in Torino in April of 1948, where Romeo attended high school and received his laurea in physics from the University of Torino.  He received a scholarship to continue his studies in physics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, PA. He was one of the founding members of the International Club, a meeting place for a growing number of students coming from all five continents.  In 1962, the physics department of Brookhaven National Laboratory, offered Romeo a postdoctoral fellowship lasting two years. For over ten years, Romeo has been a member of the Italian Cultural Society where he has served as treasurer and president. He has taken part in the Festa Italiana as the head of the cultural committee.

President Emeritus

Dr. Ronald Cappelletti

Dr. Ronald Cappelletti is physicist retired from NIST and an emeritus professor of physics at Ohio University. He has been a board member since 2005 and served as president of the ICS for many years

President Emeritus

Dr. Luigi De Luca

Luigi De Luca is a former president of the ICS. He was involved in the building up of the Italian Language Program with Maria Wilmeth and Cesarina Horing. Since 2006, Luigi has taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, and before 2006 he was running a laboratory at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda. The Italian government has bestowed on Luigi the titles of Commendatore and Grand’ufficiale in recognition of his research work, his support of the ILP and the Awards Program of the ICS as well as his interest and scholarship in the classical languages. He recently obtained a MA and PHD in Classics at Catholic University.