A native of Fall River, Massachusetts, Mancini attended Providence College, where he obtained a B.A. in foreign languages and education. He then went on to obtain an M.A (French), an M.S (Cinema) and a Ph.D. (French/Cinema) from the University of Southern California. Mancini was fortunate enough to attend USC’s film school at a time when many of Hollywood’s future filmmakers were honing their craft. Among Mancini’s classmates were George Lucas, John Carpenter, Ron Howard, and Robert Zemeckis.

Mancini's goal was to teach and write about film. After obtaining his Ph.D. he taught cinema at USC, and, over the years, at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), the University of California, Irvine and West Los Angeles College. He also contributed articles to Premiere, Rolling Stone, American Film and Film Comment. He was especially known for a course he taught for four years at LMU and elsewhere, where movie professionals came to share their films and thoughts with students. Among his better-known guests: Cher, Sean Penn, Stanley Donen, Michael York, Henry Mancini (no relation), Carpenter and Zemeckis.

While in college and graduate school, Mancini had paid his tuition in part by working as a tour director, taking groups on multi-day, international tours. In the midst of a California budget crisis, West Los Angeles College (where Mancini had become a full-time professor) decided to cut back its costly cinema program. The college knew of his travel experience and asked Mancini if he would teach in its Travel and Tourism program. He agreed.

Mancini soon went beyond his teaching to become a well-known travel speaker, writer, instructional theorist and consultant. The diverse nature of his studies helped him formulate a fresh perspective on teaching and training : that each era has a medium that dominates information-giving and that this medium shapes the way a person of that time learns best.

Lectures, Mancini argues, worked fine when colleges first emerged, since people of the time received much of their information aurally. And since professors were often clerics, they structured their lectures as sermons, thus reinforcing the "listen, don't interrupt"nature of teaching and learning.

Mancini also points out that extensive readings worked fine for students in the early 1900s, when newspapers, dense with words, provided the news and books were still the principal medium for acquiring knowledge and for storytelling.

Today, in an era when computers, video games and video dominate, teaching and training must be interactive, visual and structured not unlike a movie or TV show, to capture a learner's attention. A teacher or trainer who relies on lectures and readings to teach, concludes Mancini, is completely out of step with today's learner.

Mancini's theories have been applied most fully in the travel business, where his company has created some of the industry’s highest-profile instructional and certification programs, most especially those for the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and Marriott International. It is estimated that more than 300,000 travel professionals worldwide have benefited from training programs that he has designed or delivered. His client list includes Norwegian Cruise Line, Seabourn Cruise Line, American Automobile Association, Holland America Line, Trafalgar, American Express, Pleasant Holidays, Lufthansa and Silversea Cruises.

Mancini also designed and staged the AAA Travel High School Challenge, a national competition on travel-related geographic knowledge. During its four years of operation, the Challenge attracted over 200,000 teenage contestants at local, state and national levels.

Mancini continues to teach Travel and Cinema at West Los Angeles College as an adjunct professor. He has authored seven books, written and appeared in 30 videos and helped design numerous web-based courses. His book Access: An Introduction to Travel and Tourism received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers. He was named "Educator of the Year" by the International Society of Travel and Tourism Educators.

- Connecting with Customers: How to Sell, Service and Market the Travel Product (Prentice Hall 2002)- Access: An Introduction to Travel and Tourism (Delmar 2004)- Time Management (McGraw-Hill 2003)- Selling Destinations: Geography for the Travel Professional, 5th Edition (Delmar 2010)- Conducting Tours: A Practical Guide, 3rd Edition (Delmar 2000)- Cruising: A Guide to the Cruise Line Industry, 2nd Edition (Delmar 2003)