The FFCS Alumni Series continues to bring stories to life featuring district alumni and their pathways to success. We have continued to share their stories to reinforce the backgrounds that were developed at FFCS and how they’ve made connections in their careers, while shifting their lifestyle narrative.
Today, we feature Class of 2002 graduate Peter Farina. With a passion for learning about his Italian heritage, he traveled abroad to Italy in the spring of 2004 to learn more about his family’s history and, in the process, built an international business. Mr. Farina credits the community at FFCS for his initial success after graduation and beyond. He cites the friendly and close-bonded aspects of the Fonda-Fultonville community and the opportunities it presented while in the district.
Mr. Farina is currently the founder and president of italyMONDO! LLC, a company he founded in 2006 due to his experiences traveling abroad in Italy, pioneering an entire industry as a result. For the past 16 years, italyMONDO! has continued to provide their global clientele with innovative, life-changing paths to discover and connect with their family’s past through their services, such as Italian Citizenship Assistance, Family Tree Research, and Heritage Tours in Italy.
To learn more about their services, click here.
“By experiencing overseas travel, I was able to pursue my passion of learning about my family’s historical background, but it wasn’t an easy experience,” said Mr. Farina. “With my first trip to my ancestral homeland came multiple negative scenarios that I personally experienced, such as Italian bureaucracy, the realities of off-the-beaten path travel, and nefarious business practices of some of the people that I hired to help me at the time. These unfortunate events affected me significantly, especially since they were contrasted with what was truly a life-changing experience of finding and meeting my long-long family, walking in my ancestors’ footsteps, and successfully applying for Italian citizenship.”
By addressing those setbacks, Peter returned home and used those experiences to create italyMONDO!. “In the end, the experience transformed my life for the better,” said Mr. Farina. “I decided to create a company that I wish existed when I embarked on this journey for myself, offering not just the services that I wish a company could provide, but provide them in a way that helps transform our clients’ lives as well.”
Mr. Farina and his family currently split their time between their homes in Montgomery County, NY and the southern Italian region of Molise. He employs over 30 people between italyMONDO!’s two offices in Amsterdam, NY and Campobasso, Italy.
Here’s his story on becoming a successful entrepreneur and his background in helping others chase their travel adventures. Welcome to the Alumni Series club!
How did your passion for learning about your heritage build your business?
As the saying goes, if you love what you do for a living, you’ll never work a day in your life. In fact, I’ve always had a natural gift in terms of what I do, but what differentiates italyMONDO! (and continues to differentiate us from our competitors) is that passion.
It’s not just that I was good at what I did, it’s that I loved what I did (and still love what I do today).
Now, with a team of over 30 people between our two offices, I try to transmit that passion to everyone that works here as well. In fact, as an employer, I’ll pick the person that’s passionate about their work over the person with a prestigious degree anyday, because the person that’s passionate about their work and loves what they do, will always outperform a person that’s simply doing “their job”.
When did you know it was the right time to build italyMONDO!?
To be honest, I didn’t know. I just knew that I wasn’t happy in college. The world tells you that you’re supposed to go to college, get a degree, and go work for somebody. So, although I didn’t know it was the right time to start italyMONDO! back in the early 2000s, all I knew is that I wasn’t happy following the path that the world laid out for me. I wanted to make my own path.
What I did know is that I loved helping people discover their roots, and, after experiencing Italian bureaucracy and some of the more difficult aspects of traveling off-the-beaten path Italy (combined with being taken advantage of by the only company that existed at the time), those negative experiences — combined with an absolutely transformative life-changing experience of discovering my own roots, meeting my long-lost family, researching my family tree, and becoming a dual Italian-American citizen — set off the proverbial lightbulb in my head.
Those couple of years totally changed my life (and my outlook on life), and I knew I found my calling. Regardless of what the world said, come hell or high water, I was going to follow it because it made me happy… and I did just that. I left Syracuse in my senior year of college and have never looked back (and have never been happier, either).
What type of obstacles have you overcome to become successful?
Building a multimillion dollar company and managing two offices, with over two dozen employees in two different continents, is never easy. But combining that with zero start-up capital – and effectively inventing an entire industry – is even harder.
Of course, there’s the common obstacles for anyone building a business: from acquiring your first customers, building a brand, hiring your first employees, decoupling processes known only to the founders, creating workflows that allow your team to be independent and successful — creating a virtuous cycle of growth. These are the priorities of any business owner. However, you also view them both as obstacles or as opportunities.
I prefer to view them as opportunities, though, as that’s what makes building a business exciting! In fact, I like to think that, even after a decade and a half since its founding, italyMONDO! is still in “startup mode” – constantly innovating to provide the best possible experience for our customers while continuing to grow effectively.
However, unique to me and italyMONDO!, the biggest obstacle was the language barrier! Although I’m fluent in Italian now, I never grew up speaking Italian, so it was most definitely a “baptism by fire” as I began spending half of my year living and working in Italy and was forced to learn the language as quickly as possible in order to just survive in rural Southern Italy.
Another unique obstacle was being the pioneer in the industry. Although genealogy is now “big business,” as evidenced by Blackstone’s recent multi-billion-dollar acquisition of Ancestry.com, no bank was going to give this college dropout a loan to start a business in an industry that didn’t even exist yet. In fact, when traveling (and not always having the money to have a place to stay), I slept more than a few nights in my car when I initially embarked on this journey in Italy!
What classes at FFCS developed your interest in travel and business?
More than business, my love for history was curated by the great History teachers that I had in school, such as Mr. Thompson (both father and son), as well as Mr. Mancini and also Mr. Hinkle (who filled in for Mr. Thompson one year).
What’s your favorite memory while attending FFCS?
To be honest, there’s more than a few. There were pasta nights before swim meets, Mr. Funare’s chili at football games, watching the football players come down that hill (and then eventually being one of those football players to come down that hill). To be honest, there are too many memories to count.
Our senior trip to Disney World, to just riffing with my jazz guitar on stage in the Auditorium after a school concert, to going all the way back to Ms. Cox’s throwing peanuts at her students in third grade. I can even remember my line as the bricklayer in Three Little Pigs when in Mrs. Conroy’s 1st-grade play: “Bricks I sell, bricks I sell, bricks of every kind. Bricks I sell, bricks I sell, the best you’ll ever find!”
The memories are too many to count because, in the end, the best thing about FFCS is that, as a central school system, thirteen of the most formative years in your life are spent with the same wonderful teachers, wonderful people, in a wonderful town.
Perhaps it’s difficult to appreciate that at the time. But I can attest, having now lived almost half of my life abroad and away from home, Fonda is a wonderful place to live and I was lucky to have gone to FFCS.