We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Don Cimorelli. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Don below.
Don, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I was born into a traditional Italian American family. My grandparents immigrated to the USA between the 1890s and 1920s. I always recall my mom and dad supplementing their primary jobs with secondary sources of work to be able to provide for their four children. The message was clear to obtain an education and work hard to get ahead in the USA. I was driven to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees, internships, full-time careers with leading corporations such as IBM and Fidelity Investments and seek ways to be engaged and give back to the community and others.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a retired Human Resources Executive. I always had a passion for enabling individuals and organizations to be the best that they can be. I fine-tuned my skills to do so through my career assignments in Recruiting, Compensation, Employee Relations, Leadership Development, Diversity, Division HR Leadership, HR Customer Services, and HR & Benefits Outsourcing and Strategic Program Management.
In retirement, I leveraged all of the skills that I developed throughout my career, and now I am applying them to my volunteer role as the President of Triangle Sons & Daughters of Italy organization. In this volunteer position, my passion is preserving, educating, and celebrating Italian American heritage through social, cultural, and charitable programs.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Whether it be a paid job or my volunteer work, I approach all that I do with three principles in mind:
1. Execute responsibilities on time and with high degree of accuracy.
2. . Always have an eye and mindset on how to make things better.
3. Cultivate and maintain effective relationships hierarchically and laterally across organizations.
When I speak with others who I am mentoring, I translate these principles into questions that they can ask themselves to assess whether they are on productive path to success. These simple questions are:
1. Am I doing exactly what I committed do or what is expected of me to flawlessly execute within designated timeframes?
2. Through my leadership and actions, what is better about the final results achieved in my position than previously attained?
3. Do people view me as a partner who genuinely works up & down and across the organization to collectively achieve strong results?
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
In the past 12 months, I am most proud of the growth in membership which I have facilitated for the Triangle Sons & Daughters of Italy Lodge. Our membership has increased by 33% in 2023, but more noteworthy is that I have led the Lodge to grow membership by 74% since 2020. We have been on an upward trend of continuous growth.
I account for this growth through a strategic and tactical set of actions which is consistent with the key messages I described in this story. We create and execute Lodge plans with accuracy and timeliness. The organization continues to provide popular programs enjoyed by our members, but we also keep improving and enriching our social, cultural, and charitable activities through creative new initiatives. Probably most important is that our fraternal organization provides a welcoming environment to everyone who wishes to celebrate Italian American Heritage. We live by the motto “Enter as friends and leave as part of our extended Italian American family.
Contact Info:
- Website: trianglesonsofitaly.org
- Facebook: Triangle Sons & Daughters of Italy
Image Credits
Triangle Sons & Daughters of Italy Lodge
