An exceptionally gifted woman, extremely intelligent and cultured sadly is no longer with us. Lisa Marini Finerty was our beloved and never forgotten Democrats Abroad Rome Chapter Chair back in 2008 during the Obama's candidacy and she energized us members with an uncommon vitality and drive to make sure most Americans living in Rome were eligible to vote and thanks to her she would be able to make sure to gather an enormous amount of votes for Obama from Rome. This is what happened back then: One morning I was on my computer when I got an email from her that linked to a video of La Repubblica daily online (center-left leaning), where she was due to debate the upcoming presidential election moderated by an Italian-American journalist against her Republicans Abroad opposite, a rather powerful executive been living in Rome for many years and evidently bilingual. The email's text was more or less like: "this is the debate I'm having with Republicans Abroad rep. in Rome: Tell me how I am doing". So, I opened it and unfortunately she did not very well, insisting on debating in Italian and the confrontation was embarrassingly unequal and thanks to the moderator that avoided total disaster. I felt so sorry for her and did not have the courage to tell her her linguistic debacle given also that in a rather short time a very important event was scheduled in a theater near Termini train station here in Rome, and she was designed to be the keynote speaker on an evening promoting Obama's candidacy before an audience of all the most important political left-leaning big shots in Rome as well as our Democrat Abroad members; even Rome's mayor was there, a left-leaning former journalist and one of the founders of the Italian Democratic Party. Full house. The theater was packed. I was so puzzled by her choice to still insisting delivering the speech in Italian mindful of what happened on that video a while back. When her turn was on I was sweating all over and basically holding my breath: She did marvelously, she delivered a brilliant speech in perfect Italian, and I was so amazed I could not believe my ears. How on earth she progressed from a very poor performance to a perfect one in such a short time, I will never know let alone I would not be able to speak before a huge crowd myself. She brought the house down and I was so proud of her being our Chair then. Thank you Lisa. Democrats Abroad Rome member voting in California.