After earning a BA degree in International Relations at Pomona College (Caremont, California) and a Law Degree at the Italian State University in Catania, she has worked as a lawyer with an Italian American law firm in Los Angeles, California., but then moved to manage her family estate acting as a lawyer for her own interests and during the last ten years, also as brand manager for LipPlus Jewelry and President of Van Lipp & Carter Corporation.
On the side, she has professionally worked in the field of journalism, public relations, and art photography, also as a teacher and gallery manager. Her photographs have been exhibited in several personal and collective shows and are in public and private collections and museums among which the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the National Photography Museum in Brescia, Italy, the Carrara Academy in Bergamo, Italy, the Center for Research and Archiviation of Photography in Spilimbergo, Italy, the Latvian Museum of Photography in Riga, Latvia, the Women in Photography Archive Collection at Yale University.
She has organized several art shows for Women in Photography and for several photographers, she has curated the making of a photography archive for the Tourist Bureau of the province of Catania, Italy, and she has been a member of the Visual Arts Consultation Team for the city of Catania. She has taught sales promotion, direct marketing and public relations in English at the European School of Economics in Catania; from 1990 to 2002 she wrote for newspapers and magazines like Cosmopolitan and Anna, and during 2017-18 for L’Italo-Americano newspaper in Los Angeles.
She has published three photography books: for the University of Catania, about the Catania Botanical Gardens; La Pietra di Fuoco about the use of lava stone in art and architecture; Sicilia Singolare Femminile, about women in Sicily. She has also published a limited-edition book of Polaroid Transfer images. She has also published a calendar and a photo guide to dance and ballet.
She has published a novel, Arianna e il Minotauro, and Sotto uno Stesso Cielo, a book of photos and texts which are the result of an extensive research on prisons in Italy, both have been presented at the Turin International Book Fair.
Her commercial works include calendars for private and public institutions, CD covers, brochures, and portraits.
She has been admitted to MENSA USA and has been president of a Rotary Club. She has received three times the Paul Harris Fellowship for her achievements in Rotary, has been named Honorary Academic of the European Academy of Letters, Sciences, and Arts, and has been named Artist of Italian Photography.
She is fluent in Italian, English, French and Spanish.