Our Team

Barbara De Bernardi – Founder & Director

Barbara designs and teaches all Insieme a Chicago programs! Native of Sondrio, Italy, she studied “Lingue e Letterature Straniere” at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, in Milan. After an extensive experience as a foreign languages educator for preschoolers, she graduated with a Master in Linguistics in 2010 at Northeastern University, in Chicago. Since then she has been researching ways to bridge the Italian early education system with the American one.  Loving both her home country and Chicago, she is raising her sons bilingual and bicultural, hence her inspiration to create a community like Insieme a Chicago.

Claudia Di Pancrazio – (Programs 3-5 yrs old & 10-14 yrs old) 

Claudia was born in San Benedetto del Tronto, where she attended “Liceo Classico”. She moved to Rome to study at “Università La Sapienza”, where she received her Master Degree in Archeology. After a few years she moved to France, where she was able to combine her great passions: love for art, history, children and teaching. The desire to share her Culture with the younger generations has led her to improve her skills in childhood education and collaborate with “Université de Genève” in initiatives involving French and Swiss schools. In France, she organized a small nursery in her home, where she could replicate the activities of a typical day in an Italian preschool with courses for bi / trilingual children between few months and 14 years old.

Eloisa Bressan  

Born near Padova, Italy, Eloisa graduated with a BA in Classics and a Master’s in Modern Philology from the University of Padua. When she moved to the Chicago to pursue her PhD in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University, she also looked for ways to combine her love for teaching and her love for children. That’s how she found Insieme!