Half-century quest to find birth dad brings alumna into Italian noble family
August 21, 2025 — Nikki Carlson ’87 generally groups people she knows into the following categories: people she knew before Grinnell College, friends she made at Grinnell, folks she’s met in her professional and political life, and in the last decade, her Italian aristocratic family.
Nikki Carlson ’87 stands outside her villa
north of Rome.
If you didn’t see that last category coming, don’t worry. Neither did Carlson, who didn’t know who her birth dad was until she was 49 years old. Carlson’s story has its share of twists, elation, and heartbreak, not to mention courtroom and DNA drama. No wonder she’s in negotiations with Netflix about bringing the story to streaming. It’s already a featured podcast on Audible.
But before we dive into the world of dazzling world of princesses, celebrities, and Andy Warhol artwork, let’s first go back to 1983 when Carlson was about to come to Grinnell. Adopted at age 2 by a family in Minnesota, she uncomfortably grew up in a deeply conservative household.
“My freshman year roommate – whose mother went on to become governor of Texas – calls me before we move in and says, ‘there’s something I’d like to ask you,’” Carlson recalls. “Are you a Republican or a Democrat? And I said, well, I’m a Democrat. I’m a liberal Democrat. And she said ‘well, that’s a relief.’ My first experience of Grinnell was that it would be a political home for me.”
In fact, a big reason Carlson chose Grinnell was because Iowa held the earliest presidential caucus. For the 1984 election, she worked on the campaign of Sen. Alan Cranston, who finished well behind nominee Walter Mondale.
Carlson studied cultural anthropology at Grinnell, and while it didn’t have a direct impact on her career in international business development, it gave her a frame of reference for reading the news and understanding group behavior and thinking.
“I’ll just say of all the groups of people I know, Grinnell people have the widest breadth of experience, life and culture, and travel,” Carlson says. “Grinnell is just endless people who work on every continent, from nonprofits to the United Nations. Grinnell has the most interesting, the most experienced, and the most sympathetic group of people that I’ve ever met.”
From fax girl to advising foreign nations
After graduating from Grinnell in 1987, Carlson’s job prospects were bleak as it was a time of high unemployment. She eventually found an office job as a “fax girl,” collecting faxes and dropping them off. She got promoted to “trade show booth girl.” “It was all very insulting, and no one could understand why,” she said about the masculine ideology that dominated office culture at that time.
Carlson later moved into promotional work and by the time she was in her late 20s, she was a high-level account executive with clients such as Revlon and Unilever. She went on to a job in Europe with the Ryder Cup before returning to Minnesota where she got involved in jury consultant work for law firms.
Since 2005, Carlson has been president of Carlson|Turner|Miller, which provides strategic marketing and business development services to businesses, nonprofits, and emerging nations. Clients have included 3M, NorthWest Energy, and several countries in Africa and the Middle East. She’s also worked on numerous political campaigns – including those for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid – and served as a local Democratic party chair.
Finding her birth parents
The story of Carlson and her birth parents was featured in the May 18, 2024, article written by James Eli Shiffer that was published by Airmail, a digital weekly publication delivered to readers on Saturday mornings.
Carlson had long been determined to find information about her birth parents, but the state of California refused to release her original birth certificate. In 1979, an investigator contacted Carlson’s adoptive parents about setting up a meeting with her birth mother. But her adoptive parents didn’t mention this to Nikki until the early 1990s. By then she was a mom herself.
According to Shiffer’s article, Carlson and her birth mom met in the early 1990s, but she didn’t divulge the name of Nikki’s birth dad. It would be 23 more years before Carlson found out. In January 2015, an ex-husband of her birth mom asked Carlson to visit him in Mexico.
“He had been asking me to come down to his house in Mexico for more than four years,” Carlson says. “And I delayed it. And then he said ‘I’m on my death bed. It’s now or never.’ So I get down there and he tells me the name Mario d’Urso.”
Left image: Mario d’Urso is pictured on a balcony in 2011. Right image: The only photo of Carlson and d’Urso together was taken in 2015 by Carlson’s daughter, Victoria.
d’Urso was a banker and senator in Italy who had once worked for Henry Kissinger. His family welcomed Jackie Kennedy on her first trip as first lady to their villa on the Amalfi Coast, a visit that started a lifelong friendship.
“Mario was best known as the face of the European jet set of the 1970s and 1980s,” the Airmail article states. “The paparazzi photographed his fling with Princess Margaret in 1978 and flitted like moths around his friendships with Audrey Hepburn, Imelda Marcos, kings, presidents, and tycoons. His constant parties went on till dawn. In 2011, Vanity Fair honored Mario’s perfectly tailored aesthetic by naming him one of the world’s best-dressed men.”
Fast forward to 2015 when Carlson sent her birth father an email. The subject line: “Making contact after 50 years.”
Meeting Mario (briefly)
Mario called a week after receiving Carlson’s email inviting her to Milan, Italy. They met for lunch in March 2015. Mario said he knew there had been a pregnancy but wasn’t aware of anything else. Carlson’s daughter, Victoria, joined them in Milan a week later. Mario began introducing them as his daughter and granddaughter when they met his relatives and friends.
Also during this time Mario was going to a clinic in Switzerland to be treated for cancer spreading in his lungs and liver. On June 5, 2015, d’Urso passed away. He was 75. Carlson had known her birth father for only the last three months of his life.
Carlson’s daughter, Victoria, is pictured having a meal on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Victoria flew to Italy and briefly met Mario before his passing in 2015.
“I wish I’d met him earlier. It was great, and then it was horrible,” she said of the limited time she spent with Mario. “I don’t regret it. The only thing that I regret is not trying harder to find him earlier.”
Mario’s millions
Italian law mandates that a surviving child is entitled to at least half of an estate. Thus, there was a real financial interest for Mario’s beneficiaries if he had no children. Carlson’s 11th hour arrival raised their suspicions.
According to the Airmail article, Mario had written on a single sheet of paper his last will and testament, asking that aside from five million euros for Roberto Simeone, his lover, the rest of his estate should be distributed by law.
Nikki Carlson ’87 is pictured with her cousin Alessandra d’Urso in Italy.
But then another will appeared about three weeks before Mario’s death. It was a detailed distribution of assets to select family members and friends. Carlson and three of d’Urso’s cousins formally challenged this new will, accusing his beneficiaries of an orchestrated campaign of deception and greed.
“By that time [of the second will], the cancer had metastasized to Mario’s bones, inflicting excruciating pain for which he was heavily sedated with daily doses of morphine,” the Airmail story stated. “Under those circumstances, could Mario execute a will that took two hours to put together and named 24 separate beneficiaries, distributing cash, artwork, and his enormous wardrobe?”
Carlson’s daughter, Adriana,
holds up original artwork
created by Andy Warhol
Still there was the question of proving (or disproving) Nikki was Mario’s daughter. In 2021, a new judge on the case ordered Carlson to come to court in Rome and submit another DNA test to compare it with a tissue sample taken from Mario’s lung that was stored in a laboratory. The DNA showed that the probability that Mario was Nikki’s father was the equivalent of 99.99 percent.
In a 10-page ruling, the judge found that Carlson’s paternity had been established by the DNA tests, causing Mario’s will to be automatically revoked. Carlson was ordered to add d’Urso to her name. She chose the name Maria Nicoletta d’Urso.
Carlson says she had a settlement conference with three of the legatees and arrangements were made. She ended up with one of d’Urso’s Andy Warhol silk screens. But the legal battle isn’t over. Simeone and other former benefactors have launched their own lawsuit, claiming Carlson violated international law by claiming her inheritance. The case has made its way to the Italian Supreme Court, Carlson says, but it could be a long time until it’s decided.
Carlson moved to Italy and now lives in a villa north of Rome, where she says her Grinnell friends are welcome to visit.
“It’s very validating to have persevered through this inheritance fight,” Carlson says. “It’s very validating to be on the same side as my cousins as we tried to prove it was an invalid and manipulated will.”
—by Jeremy Shapiro