Marisa Petroro

At the tender age of four, Marisa started participating in East Coast beauty pageants. By eight, this young starlet was taking trips to New York City to study acting at the highly acclaimed HB Studio. After making the pageant circuit as a teenager, Marisa won the title of Miss Italia USA and then retired her pageant days after she went on to place top five in Miss Italia World in 1996.

Marisa then crafted a five-year roadmap, packed her bags and convinced a good friend to join her on a 3,000 mile cross-country drive that ended in Los Angeles. Within the first few years, Marisa was landing principal roles in hit films such as MGM's "Pumpkin" and Columbia Pictures' "Tomcats." Also during this breakout period, she built notable television credits on NBC's "The Pretender," CBS's "The Young and the Restless," a national commercial directed by David Lynch and starred opposite Rick Schroder in the award winning country music video, Whiskey Lullaby, sung by Allison Krause and Brad Paisley.

2008 is shaping up to be another banner year for Marisa as she stars in the upcoming feature film, "Everybody Wants to Be Italian," the story of the struggle of two Italians and their quest to win each other's hearts in Boston's famed North End. Italian follows Marisa's memorable performance last year in which she played the edgy and sexy girlfriend of Paul Rudd ["40 Year Old Virgin," and "Anchorman"] in Comedy Central's "Reno 911!: Miami." She also returns for season four as one of the most recognized briefcase models (#18) on NBC's uber-popular game show "Deal or No Deal." In fact, in 2006, Marisa was named one of People Magazine's "100 Most Beautiful People," and her recognition does not stop there. Earlier this year, Marisa landed the role of Crystal, the IT Computer Girl on CBS's popular sitcom, "Rules of Engagement" acting alongside David Spade ["Saturday Night Live"]. Other recent television credits include NBC's "Scrubs" and "Las Vegas," ABC's "According to Jim," and Comedy Central's hit show "Reno 911!" just to name a few.

Outside of acting, Marisa holds philanthropy close to her heart. This past January, Marisa achieved one of her lifetime goals when she was selected as the 2008 spokesperson for The Sarcoma Foundation of America, an organization dedicated to finding new therapies to treat sarcoma, which promotes awareness and research for sarcoma patients. Not only will Marisa participate in a variety of speaking engagements at events and talk to press, she will also continue to volunteer her time to helping individuals who have been diagnosed with cancer and are undergoing chemotherapy. Marisa is a cancer survivor of Rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare childhood cancer that affects the muscles, and her public profile, along with her personal experiences battling cancer, makes her the perfect voice for this wonderful organization.

Currently, Marisa is involved with multiple nonprofit and charity organizations including the Tomorrow's Children Fund at the Hackensack University Medical Center, The Young Storytellers Foundation, Tag the World, Operation Shoebox New Jersey, The Embrace Kids Foundation, Team Sarcoma - Los Angeles, Crime Survivors and The Sarcoma Foundation of America.

Over the past two years, Marisa has been Commencement Speaker at her alma mater, Kean University in New Jersey and was honored as "Woman of the Year" by The Center for Italian and Italian-American Culture in her home state of New Jersey.