Welcome to Episode #52 of Profiles in Franceformation! I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, I’m speaking with Laura McIntyre, an Arkansas native who left corporate America to follow her dream of moving to Paris. After deciding to stay, Laura changed from a visitor status to a profession libérale visa status and put her passion for helping others discover Paris to work, by starting a business helping people find and furnish their dream home here. Just a reminder, this is the...

Welcome to Episode 51 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, I’m speaking with one of our Franceformation VIP clients, Brian Bailey, who moved to Paris for a year after covid to work as a professional swing dance teacher, before deciding to go even further and travel the world. And, just so you know, we're going to be taking a break at the end of the year, so next week's episode 52 will be the last episode of 2022! We'll be back in January with...

This week, I’m interviewing Dennis Roberts, a psychologist with the Paris Psychology Center who moved to France in August 2021 from Chicago with his spouse and two big dogs. He’s certified in the UK and 5 US states, and in the process of working on his Profession Libérale visa application, he used Foolproof French Visas as a guide, and also went through the process of becoming a certified psychologue in France with an ADELI number to treat patients through the French healthcare system. He now...

Welcome to Episode 49 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and today, I’m speaking with Abby Héraud, who moved from Kansas to France in high school, and then came back after college to marry her French husband after their long-distance relationship. Throughout her time in France, she’s navigated working as a teacher, setting up a business during covid, and becoming a mom, and navigating the French school system. She lives in the South of France with her family...

Welcome to Episode #48 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, I’m speaking with one of our Franceformation clients, Vashti Joseph. Vashti grew up in Puerto Rico, lived in the DC area and the UK, and has had several C-suite positions in startup companies before deciding to launch her own business and fulfill her lifelong dream of moving to France. After discovering the benefits of Irish sea moss, she moved to France with a Passeport Talent...

Welcome to Episode #47 of Profiles in Franceformation, I'm your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, we're speaking with Sarah Donnelly, a standup comedian who moved to Paris in 2012 and who has been finding the humor in the bureaucracy ever since. Her current show, The Only American In Paris, is at Théâtre Bo, near République, and is hilarious for all of us who have experienced moving to France, navigating French bureaucracy, and making friends with the French as we create our new...

Welcome to Episode #46 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host Allison Grant Lounes and in this week’s episode, I’m speaking with Kate Plummer. Kate, and her husband Marc, are full time senior Yoga teachers who lived and worked in Cheltenham, England for ten years. They bought a house in France 5 years ago with a view to retiring there in 10-15 years' time. A chance conversation with their business mentor a year later led to a late night “what if” conversation. Three months later, they...

Welcome to Episode #45 of Profiles in Franceformation! This is your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, I’m speaking with Patricia Brooks, who moved to France on a visitor visa in 2018 to learn French and write her book, before deciding to stay and launch her business as a life coach. In this episode, we talk about the courage it takes to leave your home and your comfort zone behind, and to navigate the many new daily challenges of life in a foreign country and a different...

Welcome to Episode #44 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host Allison Grant Lounes and today I’m speaking with Mallory Nettleton, who inexplicably fell in love with France as a child, before ever setting foot on its soil. This love was cemented when she and her husband, Ben first visited in 2010 and has continued to grow into a passion over the years. They vowed to move to France one day and finally achieved that dream in March 2022. As serial entrepreneurs, they are now building a...

Welcome to Episode #43 of Profiles in Franceformation. I'm your host Allison Grant Lounes and today I'm speaking with Cherie Mitschke, a foreign language curriculum designer, and editor who moved to France in 2021 after working with Your Franceformation. She's the editor of Allison's very first French textbook Allez, Viens!, and currently works to develop language learning materials for French and Spanish for various publishers in Europe and the US. Welcome Cherie. Cherie explains: Where her...

Welcome to Episode #42 of Profiles in Franceformation. I'm your host Allison Grant Lounes. And this week I'm speaking with Jacqueline Reddin-Williams, an English real estate agent in the south of France who moved with her family in the nineties to François Mitterand's childhood home. To find simplicity and quality of life while giving her children an old fashioned childhood in the French countryside. We talk about reinvention, about cherishing, the privilege of making someone's dream of...

Welcome to Episode #41 of Profiles in Franceformation. I'm your host, Allison Grant Lounes. And this week I'm speaking with Kate Matthews, originally from the UK, she moved to Paris 9 years ago to pursue her dream career as a professional dancer. She has worked at the Moulin Rouge, Cirque d’Hiver and the Lido de Paris and also gives yoga and dance classes. She transmits her passion for dance through her classes, which are designed to boost body confidence and self-worth by connecting to the...

Welcome to Episode #40 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, we’re speaking with Marie Grout, an American who has lived outside of the US since age 19, who raised three children in 8 different countries, and who is now retired with her French husband near Versailles, France. Since moving to France, she has been active with the American Church in Paris, and is a main organizer of the Bloom Where You’re Planted orientation that has welcomed expats...

Welcome to Episode #39 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host Allison Grant Lounes and today I’m speaking with Steve Wilkison and his wife, Carole Richmond. Steve is a web designer, writer and photographer who lives in Vence, France, with his wife Carole and their dog Myla. Originally from southern California, he first became enchanted with France when he backpacked throughout Europe at the age of 18. He fell in love with Vence the first time he saw it in 2007 while passing through one...

Welcome to Episode 38 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and today I’m happy to introduce our first British guest on the podcast. Paul Herbert moved to the Dordogne region, in southern France, with his wife Julia and their three young children at the age of 40 after losing everything in the UK. In the 29 years since, he’s reinvented himself several times, starting new businesses and making local friends in his community, before an accident sparked his most...

Welcome to Episode 37 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host Allison Grant Lounes, and in this episode, my guest is Caroline Connor, also known as Wine Dine Caroline, a Lyon-based British American wine expert, who went from winning the Oxford-Cambridge Blind Wine Tasting Competition when she was in school to starting a career in food and wine in France, becoming a WSET level 4 while sharing her passion for France’s wine industry. Caroline is currently sharing her passion for gourmet...

Welcome to this special episode in our miniseries on How-to Franceform, specializing in the administrative tasks you'll need to consider before moving to France. In this episode, Allison Grant Lounes identifies the main things you have to think about if you’re planning to move to France, from what you need to consider before making your final decision, to which actions you'll want to focus on before you arrive. We cover: Determining the right visa type and how your career will be affected by...

Welcome to this special episode in our miniseries on How-to Franceform, specializing in retirement, Allison Grant Lounes identifies the main things you have to think about if you’re planning to retire in France, from your visa type, to the yearly renewal, to topics like how health insurance and taxes work when you have a Long Stay Visitor Visa for France. We cover: What it means to retire in France: not working, and not planning to work (And why you may want to consider other visa types if...

Welcome to Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes. In this second episode of How-to Franceform, we continue to discuss working remotely in France, but more specifically how to be self employed in France.   In this episode, we’re going to cover 4 self-employment visa types:  Profession libéraleCommerçantProfession artistiquePasseport talent entrepreneurYou’ll hear about… What you should be including in your business planWhat to do if you already have a self employment...

With the rise of “digital nomads” over the past ten years, the creation of fully-remote jobs requiring only a computer and an internet connection, and the pandemic accelerating the ability to work from home even indefinitely, many people have taken advantage and have been empowered to work from anywhere, including from other countries. While it may seem exciting to be able to live anywhere, explore a new city and learn a new language by day, then work on your home company’s timezone by night,...

Welcome to Episode #36 of Profiles in Franceformation. In this episode, we have a very special guest, Janet Skeslien Charles, the New York Times Best-Selling author of The Paris Library, an historical fiction novel about a young French woman, Odile Souchet, who lands her dream job working at the American Library in Paris just before the German occupation of Paris in World War II. Janet became enamored with France as a young girl after hearing stories from the war bride who lived in her...

Welcome to Episode #35 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and today I'm speaking with Sunshine Erickson who moved to France from Boston at age 32, following her French husband. Once in France, she reinvented herself by enrolling in a licence professionnelle to enter the wine industry. Today she runs a natural wine distillation company called La Thériaque in Montpellier, France with her American business partner, Lana. Welcome Sunshine! Sunshine...

Welcome to Episode #34 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week I’m interviewing Lisa Anselmo, a New Yorker who has made Paris her part-time home. She’s a writer and author of a memoir entitled My Part-Time Paris Life about her experience building her relationship with Paris, and the growing amount of time she spends in Paris. She’s done advocacy work for Paris culture, from educating tourists about the damage caused by the Love Locks, to her more...

Welcome to Episode #33 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes and in today's episode, I speak with Lindsay Poelman, a life coach from Utah who moved to the Côte d'Azur with her husband and three children. She talks about how she first came on a visitor visa, then returned to the US to apply for a profession libérale visa so she and her husband could operate their online businesses from France, serving clients all over the world while living five minutes from the...

Welcome to Episode #32 of Profiles in Franceformation. I'm your host, Allison Grant Lounes and this week I'm interviewing your American friend in Paris, Terrance Gelenter. Terrance was a native New Yorker who always felt like a European and was coming to France regularly and integrating himself into ex-pat life before making his move permanent in 2009. A man of many talents, Terrance is the author of a memoir, Paris par Hasard: From Bagels to Brioches, gives guided tours throughout France,...