Our Story

The Lingopont team

• Elio Guarnuccio

  CEO

  Elio Guarnuccio

  CEO

  Elio brings a lifetime of innovation and international experience to his role of team leader, creative collaborator and founder of Lingopont.

  Forty years ago, as a young language teacher creating his own classroom materials, he saw that the time was ripe to re-imagine language teaching. The result was CIS (Centre for Italian Studies), which became a language school and a publishing company with strong global links. For the first time, language textbooks in schools were in full colour and designed to both entertain and inform to make learning accessible and fun. Music, humour and cartoons were integral to these seminal courses, which were based on the communicative approach now favoured among language educators.

  

  Through his more recent experience working in businesses with a strong emphasis on IT, Elio saw the opportunity that digital technologies offered for further innovation in language teaching. The result is Lingopont – the world’s first truly digitally integrated language course.

  ‘I’m not happy if we’re not pushing the boundaries.’

  While breaking new ground, Elio remains committed to the fundamental idea that learning should be fun and that students should jump right into using the language from day one: ‘Mistakes don’t matter when you start – the main thing is to be able to communicate. Fluency and proficiency will follow naturally.’

• Maria Liuzzi

  Sales manager

  Maria Liuzzi

  Sales manager

  Maria has been an Italian language teacher for over 20 years, teaching across Primary, Secondary and adult education. She recently joined the publishing company Lingopont, where she has been involved in research and development, content and editing, sales and marketing for the company’s latest course, Avanti tutta!.

  “Avanti tutta!” is a complete breakthrough in integrated teaching and learning, and the team is extremely proud of what they have produced. The original “Avanti” influenced so many people in the ‘80s and ‘90s including Maria, and she hopes to influence the next generation of “Avanti tutta!” learners and most importantly stand alongside language teachers as a partner, making language learning enjoyable again.

• Stefano Pizzolato

  Chief Technology Officer Music and Video Producer

  Stefano Pizzolato

  Chief Technology Officer Music and Video Producer

  Stefano has several roles that reflect his background in advanced robotics, software engineering and music performance and composition.

  He is responsible for creating and overseeing the architecture and development of the mobile apps and other digital products.

  In addition, he works with Elio writing and producing all multimedia other than the books. He is also the composer of the music for the Tutto bene! series of videos that were filmed in Italy.

  He grew up in Vicenza and studied electronic engineering in control systems at Padova. These days, Stefano plays piano, guitar, bass and drums and performs in a local band.

  He hopes that students of Lingopont laugh and have fun as they study ‘and only later realize they have learnt something without noticing’.

• Rosanna Di Risio

  Creative Director

  Rosanna Di Risio

  Creative Director

  As creative director, Rosanna is responsible for the ‘look and feel’ of Lingopont across all media: the books, the website, the apps, film graphics and social media. In her own words, she is a single pair of eyes that ensures that the brand vision remains consistent: ‘Everything must demonstrate a single-minded personality.’

  She helps evolve the broader business into a creative strategy, recruits the best people for each task and, day to day, is involved with layout, graphics and all the detail of each page and screen. She loves the challenge of telling a story with each project, bringing clarity to the process and making decisions through design.

  Rosanna has run her own business, lectured in graphic design at the tertiary level and worked for major design studios. She was previously creative director at a leading studio transforming the brands of major companies and institutions, ranging from banks to cultural organisations.

  Her family comes from the Abruzzo region of Italy where Rosanna is helping her cousin to record in words and pictures their mothers’ recipes:

  ‘It’s our family history on a plate.’

• Jo Horsburgh

  Editor Tutto bene! books

  Jo Horsburgh

  Editor Tutto bene! books

  Jo is the editor of the books in the Tutto bene! series.

  As editor, she works closely with the authors and designer to ensure that the text, photos and illustrations come together delightfully, accessibly and correctly while also maintaining the educational purpose and logic of the course.

  She learnt Italian, French and German as part of her classical singing training after gaining a degree in English and Politics. She’s also a qualified secondary school teacher.

  After working in general secondary school educational publishing and at Lonely Planet as an editor, she went on to specialise in editing language courses. It is a career that has brought together her love of books and love of language learning and Italian in particular. ‘Learning a language is one of the most positive things you can do. I hope this course makes doing that more enjoyable and achievable than ever.’

• Giulia Milizia

  Executive Producer

  Giulia Milizia

  Executive Producer

  Giulia is responsible for producing the Tutto bene! video series filmed on location in Italy. She is also involved with post-production and editing, as well as having the day-to-day responsibility for social media including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

  She studied video design in Rome and went on to work for the Fox Networks Group for six years in a variety of roles, from production coordination through to making television commercials for brands such as National Geographic.

  She hopes that students of Lingopont not only learn the Italian language, but develop an appreciation of Italian culture.

  Giula grew up in Latina just south of Rome. When she’s away from Italy she misses life in the piazzas: ‘…sitting on an ancient stone fountain waiting to meet your friends’.

• Marina Bartolameazzi

  Content Editor, Tutto bene! apps

  Marina Bartolameazzi

  Content Editor, Tutto bene! apps

  Marina is responsible for the content of the apps, which both support the course books and enable totally independent learning.

  She created the app content with the aim of enhancing the whole language learning experience, and refined and tailored it using feedback from teachers and students. The challenge was to make using the Italian intuitive so that students are able to use the language from the very beginning. ‘We wanted to build a process that makes sense to the student with consistent vocabulary and grammar.’

  Marina grew up in Verona and has master’s degree in Language Science and Language Teaching from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She has extensive teaching experience in Australia.

  ‘We want to offer an effective language app as part of an integrated course with books and films to give students a full 360 degree experience.’

• Annamaria Iacovacci

  Author Tutto bene! books

  Annamaria Iacovacci

  Author Tutto bene! books

  Annamaria and her fellow writers are responsible for creating the original content for the books and together they work with the editor, designer and the larger Tutto bene! team.

  Annamaria has a master’s degree in Foreign Languages from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and won scholarships to train and work as a teacher of Italian in the US and Australia.

  For Annamaria, creating materials for classroom teaching was a great preparation for conceiving and writing the books.

  Annamaria identifies one of the key challenges in writing the books as creating examples and activities to make students think about the language and discover the rules of grammar for themselves. And likewise, there was the challenge to create books that work with the interactive apps and videos: ‘so students can continue to learn without the teacher standing in the way’.

• Francesca Lavagna

  Author Tutto bene! books

  Francesca Lavagna

  Author Tutto bene! books

  Francesca is an author of the Tutto bene! books and plays a character called Francesca in the sitcom videos.

  She grew up between Novara (in the north of Italy) and Brasilia (Brazil) speaking Italian and Portuguese and went on to learn English, Spanish and French – she is now learning German. She graduated in languages and language teaching before spending several years teaching Italian in Australia.

  Francesca believes teaching must take into account the way language and grammar can change and evolve. Learning a language must be fun, and students have to learn how to communicate in real life with real language.

  She enjoys improv acting and, like her character in the Tutto bene! films, practises yoga, is vegan, environmentally concerned and prone to emotions: ‘I can laugh and cry spontaneously.’

• Tanja Ledwich

  Designer

  Tanja Ledwich

  Designer

  Tanja is responsible for designing the Tutto bene! books and apps and the Lingopont website.

  After graduating from university in 1991, she worked for a number of high-profile branding agencies and studios, but then returned to her first love – publishing and the challenge of making books.

  For Tanja, designing the Lingopont books calls on her skills of problem solving to combine photography, illustration and text, and also provides the stimulus of working in a collaborative environment. ‘I’m naturally curious and like to learn new things.’

  She first visited Italy when she was seventeen and still remembers her first taste of buffalo mozzarella and real tomatoes.

  She says that Lingopont students really are encouraged to speak Italian from day one rather than just reading and writing. ‘When you travel, it’s important you have the confidence to chat to people: it’s how we feel connected.’

• Carla Trigilia

  Communications Manager

  Carla Trigilia

  Communications Manager

  Carla is responsible for public relations, internal communications and the challenge of turning a start-up project into an international identity.

  She grew up in Syracuse, Sicily and went on to study in Rome earning a Master of Corporate Communications from the prestigious Luiss Business School. Her career took her to Milan for seven years working in a multinational PR agency handling clients such as Kellogg’s, 3M and O-I. She worked in external and internal communications dealing with national and international clients for over 10 years.

  Carla strongly believes in the importance of interaction and relationship among people, especially in a virtual classroom: ‘We want to be more than teachers behind a screen: we want to be friends – real people you can relate to and interact with to achieve your language goals in a very effective way.’

• Joe Vittorio

  Photographer and Cinematographer

  Joe Vittorio

  Photographer and Cinematographer

  Joe was responsible for photographing and filming the first three series of Tutto bene! on-location in Italy.

  He is highly regarded internationally for his corporate photography focusing on people in their working environments.

  His challenge in Italy was to make the most of each location cinematically while dealing with the practicalities of language teaching with its focus on dialogue, careful enunciation and clear views of each speaker.

  Joe’s family comes from Syracuse in Sicily. He regards it as his second home and when he’s there he still stays in the original single-room home where his mother was born.

  ‘I hope this course gives people the confidence to actually try to talk Italian – and move from being tourists to part of the Italian culture.’