The Future of Italian-American Leadership

This past January, over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I had the great pleasure to attend the Italian-American Future Leaders Conference as a fellow. This is an incredible event in its third year. It brings together hundreds of young Italian Americans from around North America to network and learn best practices to help bring Italian-American organizations into the future. It was basically like a normal conference. 

During the conference, each attendee was assigned to a table. At my table, we had participants from California, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio. Each table was given a series of tasks. Some of these were problem solving; others were content creation. We had breakout sessions, presentations, team-building exercises, talks on language and genealogy, networking, and lots of Italian food. 

On the entertainment front, our first evening was a mixer. The event was held in the Florida Panthers pro hockey arena. We attended a game our second evening; they won handily. Our third evening was a farewell party where we had a big Italian karaoke show and the best food of the event. 

The event was star studded. I got to meet Lena Prima, Pat O’Boyle, Tony Mangia, John Viola, Umberto Mucci, Cug from Meals with Cug, and the whole Growing Up Italian team. We also heard a very inspirational speech by Chazz Palminteri. 

I was able to find and connect with people from the DC and Baltimore areas. We are all still in contact and have a group chat. Some of them have already joined our Society! Hopefully, the relationships formed at the event will pay dividends and help our Society over the long term. In particular, I would like to cooperate more with some of these other organizations regarding online events. If you recall, our Society had a great series of online events during the pandemic, but we have fallen away from them recently. 

More than anything else, a key takeaway is that, although there are challenges, there are many young Italian Americans interested in leading our organizations and preserving our heritage into the future.