The Pull

The Founding Story

Queens, New York, to Partanna, Sicily

I grew up in Ridgewood, Queens — a neighborhood where so many families from Partanna had landed after the 1968 Valle del Belice earthquake. The earthquake destroyed dozens of villages in western Sicily and scattered families across an ocean. But they rebuilt in Queens without ever really leaving. They brought Sicily with them so completely that leaving had never quite happened.

Growing up on that block felt, in the best and most confusing ways, like growing up in Sicily. You heard Sicilian on the street. My Nonno grew a vegetable garden where the American neighbors planted bushes — cucuzza, tomatoes, things that had no English name in our house. Every September, my nonna made tomato sauce from scratch, the whole apartment smelling like it for days, while the neighbors watched from across the fence and didn't quite know what to make of us. I was partly embarrassed by all of it — my friends had lawns, normal lawns — and partly held by something I didn't have words for yet. If you grew up in a house like that, you already know what I mean. You don't need me to explain the feeling. You just need someone to tell you it leads somewhere.

The first time I went to Sicily I was ten years old, travelling with my nonni. I remember arriving somewhere and recognizing it — not from photographs, but from the gestures, the cooking schedule that ran all day, the way people sat at tables and argued and fed you before you had even asked. My nonni hadn't left Sicily behind. They'd carried it — perfectly intact — to Queens. I finally understood what was in the house.

I always wanted to go back. The family went when they could — when my mother started working for an airline and could get us discounts. After I turned nineteen and started working, years passed. I didn't make it back until my late twenties.

By then I knew what I was looking for. I built a career in luxury retail — MAC Cosmetics, then Saks Fifth Avenue — a world of precision, service, and understanding what people want the moment they walk in. I worked in retail until 2024. But Sicily was what I kept returning to, literally and in every other way.

I met my husband in 2009. He's a fifth-generation olive farmer from Partanna — the same region my nonni' families came from. In Sicily, these things are not coincidences. They are called destino.

After 2020, I relocated to Sicily permanently. I didn't leave everything behind. I finally stopped pretending I hadn't already arrived.

Isola Marea grew from a question I was asked constantly, once I was living here: how do I do what you did? How do I find the Sicily you're describing? How do I go back? The answer was never a tour itinerary. It was a relationship. The relationships that make Isola Marea possible — with families, communities, and the land — took decades to build. They are the reason any of this works.

And the reason you can trust me with your return is simple: I made mine. I know what it feels like to land in Sicily and feel, for the first time, completely at home. I know what it costs to leave and what it means to finally stop leaving. When you come here with me, you're not handing yourself to a stranger who happened to fall in love with an island. You're going with someone who grew up in the same kind of house you did. Who understands the weight of what you're carrying. Who already knows the way.

The Work

How I Work

I work with a small number of guests each year — not because I want it to feel exclusive, but because it's a reflection of how many people can actually be served well by one person who belongs to a place and refuses to perform. Every inquiry starts with a conversation. Every experience is designed from the ground up. Nothing is templated.

The work spans five areas: in-person hosted experiences, heritage and return journeys for people with Sicilian roots, DMC and group logistics for retreats and travel professionals, curated events in Sicily, and global travel design as a Fora Travel advisor. Each one is an extension of the same thing: access to Sicily — and the world — as it's actually lived, not as it's packaged for sale.