Page 6 - Casa Italia Gala 2024 Ad Book

CASA ITALIA WOMAN OF THE YEAR Teresa Giannini may have scaled the heights
of the mortgage banking industry, but she still finds time to embrace her Italian roots.
“My Italian heritage means everything to me,” she says. “Be it food, fashion, cinema, music, history, architecture or beauty in general, without all of this, our world would be so empty. The traditions that we cherish, the strong bonds of our families. All of that makes me who I am today.”
Teresa’s parents, Mario and Maria (Mele) Giannini, were both born in Rocchetta a Volturno in Molise. Maria
moved to the Chicago area with her family when she was 10 years old, met Mario while visiting relatives in Italy in her early 20s, married him three months later and welcomed him to America a few months after that.
“Italian was the only language spoken in our household until my father learned English, and we were raised in all of the traditions of my parents’ hometown,” she recalls.
Reinforcing those lessons, Teresa was tutored in Italian when she was young by Josette Mentesana Weber and has fond memories of attending classes at the Italian Cultural Center. She continued her studies in high school and college, spending a semester abroad in Florence, and has visited Italy regularly throughout her adult life.
But Teresa didn’t only inherit a love of all things Italian from her parents, who exemplified the dream of building a better life for their family in America.
Maria was a hairdresser who owned her own salon for decades and Mario was a sewer and water contractor who opened his own company after a few years in the States.
“They were very hard-working people who took a big risk by leaving their families and their country to come to a foreign land,” Teresa says. “My Mom always used to say, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way!’ They believed in family and education, and they instilled confidence in us that we could do anything we wanted if we put our minds to it.”