Steve Acunto, a business and non profit leader as Chairman, Trustee and Director of notable corporate, academic and cultural institutions, is an advocate of ethical capitalism, of personal engagement and financial commitment toward the sustaining of the best of Western traditions in culture, art, business and public policy.
Corporate
Mr. Acunto is Chairman of Beacon International Holdings with its family of affiliated companies, dating to 1978 in media, insurance and other business sectors.
Since 1978, CINN Global has been an established information and media hub in insurance centered largely upon Insurance Advocate, published uninterruptedly since 1889. CINN titles and services n the financial services, insurance, and public policy sectors have included more than 30 publications over its nearly 48 years and the management and in some cases creation of more than 20 insurance and financial associations, including the Insurance Federation of New York, Inc funded in 1913.
In 2019, Mr. Acunto created Beacon International to form what has fast become one of the leading international financial publishing companies in the risk and insurance fields. Beacon is publisher of US insurance market leader, Business Insurance (Chicago) Commercial Risk (London) serving the UK, the EU, and Africa; Global Risk Manager (UK and International); Asia Insurance Review (Singapore) Middle East Insurance Review (Amman), Insurance Connect, Insurance Trade, Insurance TV and Societa e Rischio (Milano and southern EU) and WorkCompCentral (Greenwich) serving the US workers’ compensation insurance market. Beacon media offer more than 30 conferences and events per year across the world, drawing more than 20,000 professionals from its market leading audience of internet and print subscribers.
The Company’s affiliated entities include Measure Publishing Inc a publisher of non fiction books and a management company for fiction publisher Chickadee Prince Books, Medical Liability Monitor magazine, L’Opera Interntionale,, and the legendary classical musical recordings, videos and books of the Bel Canto Society.
CINN Global’s investment banking affiliate, Aquilan Sovereign Risk Capital, LLC, specializes in sovereign risk financing in co-operation with such partners as Credit Global, Ltd. and Four Square Internationale Societe Anonyme SCC, (Luxembourg).
Mr Acunto is a Managing Partner of SQrinsurance, Inc and is President of NYREX Development Corp, developers of Insurance Exchanges and platforms for insurance operations..
Mr. Acunto serves on several corporate boards.
Volunteer
Academic:
Mr. Acunto serves as Trustee and member of the Executive Committee, John Cabot University of Rome (since 2002); as a Chancellor, Consular Corps College, Washington (since 2012) and, formerly as Trustee, Secretary and Executive Committee Member, University of Mount Saint Vincent in New York (1997 – 2023) and was elected Trustee Emeritus in 2024. From 2018 to 2023.
Arts:
A passionate opera fan and exponent, Mr. Acunto is a member of the Board of Directors of the Palm Beach Opera, a longtime patron of the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala, Milano. He is publisher of L’Opera, the international, monthly magazine of opera. He has chaired the American Institute for Verdi Studies at NYU (1993-1998). He is an Honorary Chairman of the Chamber Orchestra of New York and produced several CD’s featuring Italian classical artists.. He produced the premiere of Deloss Brown’s stage adaptation of the Stendahl classic The Red and The Black at New York’s historic St. Clement’s Theater; He produced the award-winning short film Just Ancient Loops (Sundance, Rotterdam, and Clermont-Ferrand Film festivals); co-produced the off-Broadway play Queen for a Day and produced Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.
Italian Commercial and Cultural Affairs:
Great-grandson of Michele Berardini, the first and among the most successful Italian merchant bankers to open branches in the U.S. (1870 to 1924) and creator of US patented international money transfer systems (1905), and grandson of composer/pianist Stefano Acunto (“Young America”) and architect Ercole Bisordi, Mr. Acunto remains active as a volunteer in Italian cultural, commercial and public affairs in the tradition of his forbearers. He is Chairman of the Italian Academy Foundation, Inc., founded in 1947. IAF’s “cultural diplomacy” initiatives have included more than 60 concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and elsewhere in New York and in Italy, as well as several fine art shows, films and publications. The IAF publishes the highly prized quarterly, (Italian Journal).. IAF sponsored the 2014 landmark exhibit Frate Francesco at the UN, featuring rare manuscripts of St Francis of Assisi for the first time ever outside Italy. The IAF underwrote the exhibit of Ahmet Ertug’s famous full sized photograph of da Vinci’s The Last Supper, at the Union League Gallery in New York.
From 2023 – 2025, Mr Acunto led the international team, organized at behest of Pope Francis, to mark the 800th anniversary of the writing of Laudato, Sie by St Francis, with a landmark, critically acclaimed show of restored and never before exhibited manuscripts articulating the discoveries and works of the Franciscans over 800 years, in the arts, sciences, medicine ,botany, mathematics, ecology and theology. The exhibit was presented in Rome’s Palazzo Braschi and in the Papal Salon in Assisi. He oversaw production of the 400 page book of illustrations and essays published by Electa entitled Laudato Sie. Treasured Texts, Inspired Images. (See www.laudatosie.com)
Mr. Acunto served from 2002 to 2017 as Hon. Vice Consul for Italy in New York State, responsible for commercial, cultural and social interests of Italy and care for Italian immigrants in the State. For his work on behalf of Italy in the United States, he was decorated with the rank of Commendatore, Order of Merit, Republic of Italy, and in 2010 received Italy’s Star of Solidarity, Grande Ufficiale (Stella della Solidarita) among Italy’s highest accords
To mark the 100th anniversary of the death of his great grandfather, Michele Berardini, who returned to Italy and died there in 2024, Mr Acunto had the small riverside church in his hometown of San Sebastiano dei Marsi in the province of Aquila, restored and revitalized.
Education and media
Mr. Acunto holds his B.A. and M.A. degrees (1971, 1973) from New York University in classical philology (Latin and Ancient Greek and he sustains fluency in Italian, German and French.. He was graduated from Mt St Michael Academy in New York. Mr Acunto is the author of Westchester County, a History and Appreciation (Windsor Books, Whittier, CA 1991) and is editor of several art books, including: Giobbi: Representative Works; New York Colors, an Impressionist’s Ode to the City; Imaginal Realism (‘Realism Immaginale’), the first introduction to this landmark artistic movement in English; and Urban Archaeology, an anthology of the work of Giorgio Radicati; and Roma non sponte sequor, his Keynote speech for the New York State Historical Society in 2010. He has lectured on art at the Harvard Club, and the United Nations on St Francis of Assisi and at the Guggenheim Museum on Italian Futurism. Mr. Acunto served as a weekly guest commentator from 2012- 2108 on European and American affairs, notably the early Ukrainian crisis, the Obama Presidency and the Papacy on ARISE TV, broadcast from London and Johannesburg to the UK, EU, Africa and the Middle East. In 2024 and 2025 he was featured regularly as a guest commentator from Rome and New York on Newsmax television.
Memberships and service
Mr. Acunto is a Chevalier, Order of SS Maurice and Lazarus, the dynastic order of the House of Savoy and is a Chevalier, Order of the Holy Sepulchre, founded in 1336. He is a Governor on the Board of Governors of the Union League Club of New York, where he has chaired ULC’s Arts Committee for several years, the Tiro a Segno Club, the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, the Palm Beach Yacht Club , Circolo degli Esteri (Rome), and the Trump International Club in Palm Beach. He has been an active participant in the Path to Peace Foundation directed by the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations since 1998 and has served on the Board of the Casa Italiana at NYU.
Personal
Mr. Acunto and his wife, Carole Haarmann Acunto, divide their time among residences in Greenwich, Connecticut, Rome, Italy and Palm Beach, Florida. Their daughter, Claudia Palmira, resides in Rome, Italy, with her husband, Mauro Benedetti and their son, Ludovico. The Acuntos’ son, Stephen Jr., his wife, Dr. Veronica White, and their sons, Enrico and Edoardo, reside in Princeton, NJ.