About the Producer

Barbara Ann Zippi is an award-winning communications professional, publisher, journalist, event producer, and lifelong advocate for Italian-American heritage. She currently serves as Associate Publisher of the Delaware Valley Italian American Herald and is the founder of Ciao Bella Living Italian Style, celebrating Italian and Italian-American culture, traditions, food, heritage, and travel through print, television, social media, special events, and cultural experiences.

With more than four decades of experience in public relations, media, marketing, and special-event production, Barbara has created and produced major community celebrations, cultural festivals, tourism initiatives, fundraising events, and promotional campaigns throughout the Delaware Valley. Her background in entertainment began with Al Alberts Showcase, where she worked in television production, public relations, promotions, talent, sponsors, and special events. She later founded the Italian American Heritage Festival at Rose Tree Park, which grew from approximately 3,000 attendees in its first year to more than 12,000.

Barbara's passion for Italian heritage is deeply personal. Her family roots trace to Loreto Aprutino in Abruzzo, Italy, and today she divides her cultural work between the Italian-American community here at home and her continuing relationships in Italy. Through Ciao Bella Living Italian Style and Adventures in Abruzzo & Beyond, she works to preserve traditions, reconnect families with their heritage, and introduce others to the Italy she has known and loved throughout her life.

As producer of Taste of the Feast of the Seven Fishes, Barbara is bringing together those worlds—food, family, heritage, entertainment, community, and tradition—while giving a beloved Italian-American Christmas Eve custom a fresh new presentation. More than an event, the Feast is designed as a celebration of the traditions handed down from one generation to the next and an opportunity to make new memories while ensuring those traditions continue.

Preserving the past. Celebrating the present. Creating traditions for the next generation.