This Year’s Distinguished Alumni: Mia Berloni ’15

by Julia Montgomery ’26

Mia Berloni is the CEO of Teatro Group, a 2015 Rundle Academy graduate, and this year’s recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award. Mia started her journey at Rundle College in the grade 2 before moving to Rundle Academy in grade 5.

Rundle prepared her for her journey through life through specialized support, building confidence and helping her cope with adversity. She states, “The best thing you can do for young people is have them leave feeling like a capable individual.” This is precisely what Rundle Academy did for her.

Mia then went on to explore her post-secondary journey at Queen’s University. However, when she completed her undergraduate degree, the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic so her plans to travel to Italy were derailed. This was how she returned to the family business to work full-time. She had started her master’s in social work; however, when her family faced a tragedy, she moved back to the restaurant to help her family.

Even though working for the restaurants was not originally her plan, she said that once she was there and committed to it, she discovered how much she loved it. While social work still greatly interests her, she is extremely happy with the path she’s on and the work she gets to do. Mia oversees a large group of restaurants with five brands and eight locations: Teatro, Cucina, Vendome, EAT, and four Alforno restaurant locations. Every day in the Teatro group is different, but Mia is primarily in charge of the behind-the-scenes work; taking care of meetings, menu launches, cost savings, and planning for growth. 

She says that despite the growth and size of the Teatro group, she’s proud there is still a personal, small business feel to the company, and that she still gets to be a part of the individual restaurants.

Mia has a lot of experience as an entrepreneur, and she is always willing to share her advice with the Rundle community, including as a guest speaker at graduation and on Dr. Rogers’ R+ podcast. Her main advice is to have grace with oneself. It is impossible to do everything perfectly, she says, so being able to forgive yourself is a crucial part of owning a business. She also says to take every experience as a learning opportunity and persevere through. Sometimes mistakes happen or you have to make a difficult decision, but using your past experiences to inform your present and future is an important skill. Her final piece of entrepreneurial advice is to find people you can trust and lean on to help you share in the highs and lows of owning a business. 

Mia also shared some great advice for living a better life. She stands by the idea that everyone has to have faith that they will succeed in the path they’re on, even if it is not how you picture your life going;  that path will eventually lead you to where you need to be. 

Given her skillset and her commitment to Rundle, Mia certainly deserves the Distinguished Alumni Award! It was an honour to interview and learn from Mia Berloni’s story, and share it with this community that she will always be a part of.