Where I Work

I haven't gone in too much depth about what exactly it is that I do, where exactly I do it and how. And basically it goes like this.
At the end of December of 06 I stepped into my now-boyfriend's office, in which my now-boss was then-renting a desk. They're friends.

And I interview to be a tour guide. And do to things always going how they should but never as I believe -- I end up as the company secretary. The only other person beside the boss working in the office.

Then --- maybe it's because I was in the office every day until 9PM -- or maybe it was because my boss had a distinct vision of the future he wanted to create for the company and I was just there and willing to make it happen alongside him --- maybe cause I really needed the money and needed to prove myself to get it --- we grew. We grew a lot. Mostly at my prompting, we hired now people. Astra, Emma, Cagins, our first graphic designer.... Then the ideas never stopped. And nor did the hiring.

What do we do? We RUN the tour business in Rome. Not hotels. Not flights. Just tours. We conceive them, we design them and we sell them. We hand select our guides and train them in the history of all things Rome. At the moment we have about 15-20 live and active tours running in the city of Rome with 3 more about to go live (I say 15-20 because that depends what you consider a tour).

We are a completely self sufficient company. We have two in house graphic designers and one in house programmer, all who work full time and make up our adored IT team. There's the director, Simone -- my only boss. There are three 2nd level managers of which I am one. There's Julie, our On-Site manager who is mother to all of our 20-30 (the number must change daily) guides and coordinators --- who trains them and deals with them and make sure their job gets done on site. Then there is Emma, my dear friend and our company Spokeswoman --- fluent in Italian and English and French, who had a way with the clergy and manages to weedle deals and contracts out of all of the venues that collaborate with us.

Then there is me. I manage Operations and Distributors under the title "Project Manager". I invented that title a long time after I realize that for no two days in a row was my job going to be the same. So I needed something all-encompassing. I have a team of five girls who work under me and we manage everything from database system design to bookings to finances to --- well anything that could involve the use of a computer, a phone and/or a fax machine. I am also the official spokesperson to/from the IT team.

In summation --- I love my job, the work we do and the people I work with. We're a young international, multi-lingual team of entrepreneurs and idea-ists spreading the gospel of good tours in Rome -- which, frankly, didn't really exist before we showed up on the scene.

Then that's it. If any of you find yourselves in Rome, consider one of our tours. We've hand picked the best venues and themes and can assure American style quality that most Italian companies often can not :-)

www.darkrome.com
www.myvaticantour.com
www.mycolosseumtour.com