Alessandra Gennaro - zigzagging to the centre

A life following freedom’s own rhythm, earning numerous titles, working as a first woman judge for the ecclesiastical court in Italy, until embarking on the greatest adventure of all: being Alessandra.

Now, if I had to tell you how I stumbled upon such an extraordinary woman in her utter simplicity of spirit… I don’t even know. There’s no tale of an amazing encounter. There is only Instagram and chance involved. I just knew I had to know who she is, I knew her life story mattered… yet her public profile had no trace of her past careers and things. We agreed to meet for a cappuccino at Fabrique Bakery in Covent Garden, on a Tuesday morning last week.

The woman that I found sitting in front of me is someone who had finally gotten to the centre of herself, thus at the beginning of her own personal Renaissance. Her future is promising like one would imagine it for a 20 year old, except Alessandra is in her her late 50s. She has a Mary Poppins bag of experiences no 20 year old could dream of, which makes we wonder who would she be today had she not lived them all? I say this because we live in a time when the young generation wants to jump start at life, refusing anything less than “my dream job”. Well but what if life was going to give you the dream job by taking you to unimaginable places to collect some shells on your way? ….

I did a little research, nothing detective like 🤣 but I stumbled upon your biography on a website. I am amazed. I find a certain admiration for all your titles and so a question rose spontaneously: how does a woman like you, with all her academic background, not have a career like one people would expect her to?

Good question, firstly I’d to say that I did have a beautiful career in Italy. I kept it all the while zigzagging, because what my biography doesn’t tell you is that I am the daughter of a tram driver. I’m proud to say the best thing that could happen to me in life is my father, but it meant not having any parental support… I don’t only mean referrals, which are kind of part of the game and some people have this advantage. What I’m talking about is privileges. I see it with my daughter, she has way more privileges than I did at her age because now I am inserted in a different social structure. So let’s say I arrived where I wanted to get, even if zigzagging.
The problem rose when I had to leave everything for the career of my (second) husband and move to Southeast Asia. I imagined finding an easy way in Singapore, I thought ‘well there’s less people and certainly there will be less competition.’ In truth, it is there that I found the big stumbling block of my life: because I had all these titles no one wanted to hire me. That was a big life lesson, a very bitter one indeed. It still hurts now to think about it, because if I think about the pride in my father’s eyes … being the first graduate daughter …

Thing is I didn’t make it on purpose to study all this much and get all these qualifications, I entered as if by chance in a sort of academic tunnel. It comes from this way of living zigzagging through life because I wasn’t at peace with anything. I always felt that I had to have something more than others. I felt I had to always prove myself.

Allow me to digress a little, when I started to work in the ecclesiastical court, I already had all the bachelors and the PhD and was already a professor but in the documents I was still addressed as Mrs. I mean my bosses when they’d redact a document they would write my name followed by ‘signora’, Madam/Mrs. So one day I decided to address them and said ‘Look, not that I expect to have a title like Queen Elizabeth, nonetheless I think you should put Doctor and not Mrs in the formal documents.’ At the time I was covering a position equivalent to today’s public prosecutor. They didn’t even consider me. Do you know when I became Doctor? When during a case, the two spouses were very hostile against each other, the husband was a lawyer and had challenged the Administration’s acts saying ‘the acts aren’t valid because the public attorney doesn’t have the titles.’ Then and only then they granted me the rightful titles and called me Doctor.

Singapore was the same thing. In Singapore I scared some people due to the fact that I was overqualified, my CV was too “important”. So I had to start over. 

This is very common, all too common still nowadays everywhere around the world, and you experienced it the most in Singapore: women who are considered too much, too clever. These women have a lot to offer. I know how it feels, it’s very painful when all this apparent too muchness is not welcome. But I think also, now in retrospect, these women like you, like me, can often stir fragile environments that stand on poor grounds. And that yes it’s scary. So what I mean is it is the power you have in you to make changes happen, not you as a person, that is absolutely terrifying for those who know they got all to lose should even a slight change take place. Society at large doesn’t value these women just yet. But one day will come that this is going to be treasured like gold.

Look, let me start to tell you how good it feels being in London because here there isn’t any distinction - or at least this is my own experience. I mean maybe sometimes it can be perceived as mere indifference, where in reality, as my daughter puts it, nobody cares. Nobody cares how you’re dressed, nobody cares about your sexual tendencies, nobody cares about the colour of your skin. It’s true, London is a place like this. Here, it’s the first time in my life that I don’t feel like a woman. I mean, I don’t feel upon me the limitations placed on women. I feel part of a team and I love it.

No matter what’s being said, because we still live in a society managed by men, there’s a tendency to be afraid of that which is different. And a woman is different, for many reasons, for one thing we are multitasking. We are structurally thought to be doing many things and most times we are raised by women, thus it never occurred to my mother that I couldn’t make it… I am the same with my daughter, but I see my girlfriends are much more tolerant with their sons. It’s like we have this long chain of faith in the capacities of our daughters that gets passed on to their daughters and so on, that maybe translates in this way of living without giving it too much thought. And maybe this creates an issue for those who actually need to think more about things. 

Let me add another matter, and it’s true: we should be more helpful and solidary towards each other. I experienced this many times, both positively and negatively. My best experiences have been when there was a big solidarity amongst women. In the latter part of my life, I collect only positive experiences with women. I discovered them late, and today I choose to have teams of women only. 

Tell me about London…

London has been a miracle, because I came back from Singapore in pieces. My objective was to do nothing and get out of the game. The reason being that all that has been done in Singapore had been done badly, I won the championship of mistakes over there. I was terrified to fail again so I told myself, ‘why bother at the age of 55 to build anything new, my husband has a nice job, I’ll stick to being a wife.’ In reality, after 2 hours from having formulated this strong intention, I saw a sign in a charity bookshop that read “now accepting volunteers”. So I began working as a volunteer, discovering to my surprise how professional a charity activity can be. It was the first place where I wasn’t overgiving and it turned out to be the one place where I felt welcomed as I am, they were truly happy to have me there. 

‘You are more than enough,’ they told me. Thus I began a sort of healing process because for the first time I didn’t need to enter a competition with myself thinking I give too little.
More opportunities arose…

(A.N.: She left out of this interview a crucial part, that actually she was offered a highly paid managerial position because the charity bookshop is owned by one of the biggest and well known charity businesses in the UK. And she turned it down, with courtesy. Ok now back to the interview…)

Now, I’m not sure this could’ve happened in Italy because today I would be “a 57 years old lady in Italy” and no one would want me in spite of all my titles because you’re considered trash at my age. In Singapore they didn’t want me even when I was 10 years younger, so… I see London as a locus amoenus, as the latins used to say. I was offered unimaginable work opportunities, that from a career point of view were incredible without even having to show my academic titles. Who knows…

The other day, a friend of my husband after I told him about my latest job - not even all I’ve done in my life - he pointed out a series of places where I could get hired and do something… And I am sure that this time I would be heard… would I want to.

Would you want to…

Yes, I don’t want to anymore. I’m not interested anymore. Do you know why I don’t want to anymore? Listen, let me tell you because it’s a beautiful thing. In the end, what I learned from all these closed doors and humiliations, this feeling of uselessness in spite of the evidence - because the nos that I got told were coming from environments where I was the only one licensed and I kept asking ‘why in the world don’t you want me??’ Well perhaps I have a terrible character but during those initial hiring stages an evaluation of the character was not even requested! - So as I said, now I don’t go look for something, anything anymore because I have created something that is totally my own, where instead of a title there’s the person with a preparation - certainly - that people judge in the based on what and how much you offer there and then. 

So I started all over at 57 years old, by chance. Now I have something that fills my life with joy and a lot of work (!!!). My mother was a travel agent, and I should’ve continued the family business but I wasn’t interested in their way of organising travels. What I would’ve wanted - a lot! - was to make people travel by inserting them in a cultural context. I had in mind a concept of good leisure, otium to say it in latin terms. And I’ve always chased this dream from the bank because I never had the time to actualise it, there was always something I had to study but the idea had always lived within me to have my own cultural circle - comprehensive of travels finalised to the improvement of oneself.
I would’ve not believed had someone told me that I would end up doing the job I wanted when I was 20 years old, but that wasn’t possible for many reasons. Now, 37 years later, I’ve found the right conditions and it’s going super well.
Thus, why would I want to go back to something that requires an academic title? I got them anyway, I’m happy about it. And to be honest, some of the doors that closed when I left Italy… opened again. Hence there might be in the future a few collaborations with the university. 

By getting numerous doors shut in my face, I came to the conclusion of not wanting to knock anymore - at least not to those doors. And I created my own door, which is open. I have a home with many doors and many windows open for everyone. This is important…

I remember when I was 19, and got called for an interview by a bishop for a teaching position, my father stopped me at the door and told me, ‘Always remember one thing, head up and look forward.’ From then onwards, it has always been that for me. I mean, your dignity is the most important thing and this was told to me by a man of a modest profession - nonetheless a winner. What I suffered in Singapore was all the more difficult because I came from such a high position in Italy and found myself almost at the bottom of the professional structure. I bathed in humility. And humility is positive, to step one’s dignity is not. This is the biggest lesson I learned and I would never want to treat anyone the way I got treated. There’s many ways to say no.

Ok, what are all these incredible titles?

😂 It all began with a bachelor in Ancient Literature, though half way through I got tired of the grammar. And, because in Genoa there was the extraordinary Professor Rebora who was starting to speak about food in the 80s, I jumped into anthropology. So whilst my Ba is in the end in Ancient Literature, my thesis co-supervisor was Professor Cerulli who was an anthropologist. Meanwhile, given that I wanted to go to study in Milan - because Genoa was too small and my father was too strict - I was promised I would go only had I gotten into the University Cattolica. At the time, to be admitted you had to do a course in theology. Luckily I had already started to study theology just so I could “run away” from home, but I unexpectedly became very passionate about the subject so I kept studying until I got a Ba in Theology. I kept studying until later I became a Magistral Doctor in Ecclesiastical Law, which was an unexpected turn of events after I met by chance an old professor who offered me the opportunity that changed my life. The invitation was to become the first woman judge for the Vatican and in order to cover that position I got a Masters in Canonical Process followed by a PhD in Canonical Law. In the middle of that I forgot what else I did because when you’re there… I thought, once I’m here, let me get this, let me get that… and so I studied a lot to get different licenses and more titles. 

How did you get to cook? I mean, it’s not just the mere act of cooking but I’m talking about the many recipe books that you published.

See that I forgot. I always loved to cook, ever since I was a child. My mom had a book, La Grande Enciclopedia della Cucina Curcio, and I would constantly leaf through it, dare I say it was my real training text. My mother was a great cook, I wouldn’t say that I was great at it too… I enjoy it. My way has always been that of the “porca figura”, maximum result with the minimum effort.

How can we even translate the expression “la porca figura”? 

“Porca figura” is a Genovese saying. In Genoa we have a peculiar irony, where the Genovese doesn’t laugh but tells you these things. Maybe it’s similar to the meaning of the word “shameless”, because you really need to be shameless to do certain things. 

Anyway, to tell you, during my years at the university there was a big buzz, and that Professor I mentioned earlier, Giovanni Rebora, founded together with a young Ferran Adria the “Conservatorio delle Cucine Mediterranee” in Barcelona. I began to look at food from another perspective, even when I opened my food blog and later launched the MT challenge (from Menu Turistico, being the name of the blog), I was more and more interested in food from the academic perspective. This blog was an immense success after the first year. To celebrate all these people who followed the blog at the time, I started the MT Challenge: it lasted 72 editions, becoming I think one of the first Italian online communities. I chose this name because I was working as a judge at the same time and I had to stay anonymous using pseudonyms. I spent years waking up at 5AM to blog then go to the office at 8AM. Now I can talk about it and tell you this because I resigned from the position when I couldn’t do it anymore from Singapore, however from 2004 until 2017 I worked as a judge and I couldn’t do anything else nor talk about it. By the way, it’s important to say this: I became a judge for the ecclesiastical court when I was a divorced single mother, so not just a woman. I was a woman with a somewhat bad pedigree, yet it proves that not everything and everyone in the catholic church is closed minded. I even remarried after a year of being a judge. 

However, back to the cuisine. The challenge was born from an inspiration I took from an American thing, basically in this community we’d take turns every month to choose a recipe that the rest of the community had to cook. We set the rules, people could tweak a few things, maybe change a couple ingredients but not more, the winner of the best remake could choose the next recipe. 

At that point we wanted to preserve all the recipes, thus creating cookbooks that were tied to a charity, Piazza dei Mestieri. I wrote 7 cookbooks that sold 40000 copies, and then I officially closed the chapter on food in Singapore. 

So when you were little what did you dream of becoming?

The dream has always been to be a lawyer - nonetheless I always thought about leisure. I would observe the kind of travels that were popular in the 80s (the holidays camps aka ‘villaggio turistico’, Alpitour, etc.) and thought to myself that they were all missed opportunities. People didn’t travel to learn a new culture and enrich themselves with knowledge and beauty, and I would’ve loved to be able to organise a different kind of leisure.
Anyway, I had the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” on my bedside table and I read it too young not understanding much - actually some things I understood after watching the movie with my daughter. That has been the book of my life. It’s funny how life… that was a choice I couldn’t have made at the time and I chose Ancient Literature because I liked it, and then life brought me there nonetheless. Actually I was brought to an even better position, of being able to judge. Now, I repeat this time and time again, the only thing I learned after being a judge for almost 15 years is that you cannot judge people. You can judge the facts, but never the people. My job was made of very delicate matters and I’ve seen things that one may think don't exist, well I tell you they exist and that our lives, the lives of everyone are made of highs and lows, light and shadow. I mean, when I listened to the wife… she was right; when I listened to the husband… he too was right. Then when you find yourself in front of people who really did terrible things, you may find out that they got to that last act because of wrong acts having been done to them in their life… and you stop and wonder, what if that happened to me? Which doesn’t mean to forget what is right and what is wrong but it means to have compassion, and judge the facts. I felt compassion for these people in the latin sense of the word, in fact I had to go to therapy because it was a lot to bear for my mind and heart. 

What’s the place of art in your present life? And where is your freedom?

I had 5/10 in art in school, so a failing grade. That’s the reason why I never took an exam in History of Art at the university even though I followed all the courses. What my CV won’t tell you is the first part of my adulthood which was an extremely difficult period of my life, and the only thing that kept me going literally was raising my eyes and seeing beautiful things. This history of art that I was studying by myself, meaning I was following the courses but not officially, has been a life saving anchor. It also became a bond between me and my daughter because when we’d go to museums I would encourage her to play with the paintings. Back then I wasn’t fully conscious of this pillar nor was I sharing this with people other than my daughter. Today, it occupies pretty much the same space with the only difference that I made public how much I love it and share the knowledge I have. 

How free am I? I am utterly free. Alessandra means protector of people, I was born free. I put the conditionings on myself. I was born in the year of the horse and to me it’s the animal that feels the most of freedom. My life is full of obligations, the more you age the more duties you have, whatever they say, but I got the head of someone who knows she can choose. Actually, whenever I realized I couldn’t choose, I cut chords. The whole zigzagging through life started from that simple fact. Dignity and freedom are the ingredients of such zigzagged life. 

As usual in this interview you don’t give out many details BUT I know you have an art community ….

webinARTe is my community of 287 members who pay to hear me talk. And this has been the biggest conquest of my life because I’ve always done everything for free. 

Why?

Well, at the base there’s a lack of self confidence, no matter what others may think or imagine of me… no matter all that I’ve achieved, it’s still there. It may come from my background: you must do more otherwise they don’t want you; you must give more otherwise they don’t want you. Maybe in a few years I will be grateful to Singapore because there I had everything and was giving everything yet nobody wanted anything to do with me. 

The membership isn’t a high price but it’s a lot because it’s really the first time that I have a business model. Moreover, it’s fantastic to be doing something for which I don’t have qualifications nor titles, I can be simply Alessandra. This is truly my best conquest.

Where to find Alessandra? Surely her instagram(s), where she writes primarily in Italian: An Old Fashion Lady is the main one, webinARTe is the art community & cultural circle meeting every week online and taking cultural trips every year organised by Alessandra (you can join them), webinARTe London is the local hub for Italian speaking people visiting the city (Alessandra and Kezia are the tour guides), Cook my Books is her new (meaning it is not the one we mentioned in the interview) food blog, where her girlfriends cook the recipes from her cookbooks. And here you find her cookbooks! Lastly, if you got interested by the MTChallenge, this is the link to the whole project.

P.S. I honestly thought I had too many different instagram accounts (my food business, #IHG, and then my personal)… until I found her and discovered a world of different activities all deserving their right place. In fact, it is amazing to be able to hold space within ourselves and online for the our multiple projects and passions. Instagram for once is a positive place where to showcase our multidimensionality.

P.P. S. 🧵 Today Alessandra has the cultural baggage, the knowledge, the savviness, the everything-she-needed-at-20-but-didn’t-have. Perhaps life, the universe (whatever you want to call it), knows best how to up your skills to be ready for the moment the door opens for that thing you’ve secretly always wanted to do. Perhaps we should trust our life path, whichever it is, however it looks. Perhaps we really are exactly where we are meant to be, even when it looks a million miles away from where we would actually rather be.