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Gina Stipo grew up in a typical Italian-American family that loved food. Her love of food and Italy was so strong she decided to leave the corporate world. In 1996, she began travelling extensively throughout Italy, exploring the food and culture of the country’s many regions. She came to ICE in 1998 for formal culinary training and worked in San Domenico restaurant in New York City before a sojourn working in restaurants in Atlanta. In 2000, she moved to Tuscany to work on the culinary programs at the agricultural estate of Spannocchia. In 2011, she opened her own school, Ecco La Cucina, near Siena in Tuscany. There, she teaches Tuscan cuisine and Italian regional cooking to visitors from all over the world in single day, hands-on classes as well as weeklong courses. Stipo has a well-defined culinary voice, saying, “I have a reverence for Italian cooking, the simplicity and purity of it, the respect for the freshest ingredients. My cooking, as well as how and what I teach, reflects that.” In 2013 she moved back to the states and opened up At the Italian Table in Louisville, Kentucky.