BAIA was started in 2006 by a very small group of Italians, my friends Michele Ursino, Matteo Daste and Giorgio Ghersi. I joined the association only a few weeks after it was founded. The founders' long term goal was to build a business community of Italians in San Francisco and in the Silicon Valley who didn't identify themselves with the historical group of Italian-Americans or with those well-established Italians who had immigrated to California in the 70s and 80s.

At the time, in the Bay Area, we were starting to see several professionally qualified Italians who moved here to take well paid jobs. I was one of them. The existing local Italian associations, despite being very active, were not targeting this new group of immigrants and their traditional cultural activities were not catching our attention.

Read more

Source: http://blog.baia-network.org/