As I reflect the current crisis in the Ukraine, I'm reminded of eight women I interviewed for my book, Women Who Walk because eight of those 20 women either lived through a war, ultimately fleeing their home countries as refugees, or they worked in environments in the aftermath of a recent war; or they grew up with a father who fought in the second world war, and for several of the women, it was a combination of two of the situations I've just mentioned. Eight out of 20 is almost 50%  and...

Parisian-born Isabelle is a marine scientist, and a classically trained homeopath. She's also one of the women I interviewed back in 2018 for my book, Women Who Walk: How 20 Women From 16 Countries Came to Live in Portugal. Since then, she has moved from Portugal to Spain, and now that she's 'sort of retired' she's been active volunteering abroad, in particular, at Spikenard honeybee Sanctuary in Virginia, in the US, and in Tanzania with the organization Homeopathy For Health In Africa. More...

Montse Oliver was born in the late ’60s in a town near Barcelona where she says, “I had a standard suburban childhood without any international glimpse whatsoever.” By the late ’80s she was juggling a career in finance, two small children, and when her husband’s job relocated to the US, she was extremely reluctant to go; life was simply too hectic to entertain the challenges and stress of a country move. However, she acknowledged that it would be an ‘opportunity’ for the whole family, and so...

Originally from Glasgow, Scotland, Doreen Cumberford has been an expat for over 40 years. She has moved 37 times living in eight countries on four continents - plus the country moves she and her husband have made more recently as international housesitters! She worked for the British Foreign and Commonwealth office in London, and Cameroon, West Africa. This was followed by three years in Dubai, 10 years in the US, two years in Japan, and then Saudi Arabia, where she lived for 15 years as an...

Sally Cronin was born in the UK in the early '50s, but from the tender age of 18 months, she began what has been a lifelong nomadic existence living in eight countries, including Sri Lanka, Malta, South Africa, the US, Belgium and Spain before settling in 2016 with her husband on the Southern coast of Ireland. Her work and her desire to see some of the most beautiful parts of the world has taken her to many more destinations around Europe and Canada and south to New Zealand. All those...

In 1985, Jill Henry joined the Australian Federal Police and over the next 15 years, while based in Sydney, her work involved general crime, drug seizures and fraud cases. Dissatisfied with 'plain clothes' policing, she applied for overseas peacekeeping roles and was offered a post in East Timor with the UN. In 2000, she was relocated to the former Portuguese colony where she was an officer in the Vulnerable Persons Unit, dealing with crimes of sexual abuse, rape, child abuse and incest. The...

Born in 1983 in the tiny country of Moldova, which at the time was still a part of the Soviet Union, Inna was in primary school when in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Because she attended a school where classes were taught in a number of languages, she went on to graduate from University with a degree in English, French and Spanish language and literature, eventually teaching languages in Moldova. But as an intellectually curious woman with multiply interests, Inna adapted her skill set...

Equipped with a law degree, an internship from the BBC White City in TV script writing and film production, plus certification as an ESL teacher, and still only in her 20s, Zoe Popham headed for Thailand for adventure, and to teach English. Serendipitously, she knew an English guy working in Bangkok on a film and he invited her to work with him. The realization that there was international production work in Thailand, led to a job opportunity with an Indian-Thai production company that made...

In this episode, I have a kitchen-table style conversation with German-born, wise elder, Ingrid Bloser Martins. Ingrid is my neighbor in Estoril, Portugal, and she is someone I've come to know over the years as a woman whose diverse cultural experiences have afforded her a unique perspective. Our conversation focuses primarily on her insights into Japanese culture, as Japan is the longest posting her Portuguese husband was assigned as a diplomat, and it's where they lived in the Shibuya...

With a BA from Sotheby's Institute of Art and an MA in Dutch Baroque Art from London's Courtauld Institute of Art, in 2013, Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff founded, Art Historical London, offering art lectures, courses, tours, travel and events from London. Over the years, she expanded to events in New York and Amsterdam, and in March, 2020, due to Covid and the cancelation of her in-person lectures and tours, Mariska quickly up-skilled, taking her programming online and worldwide – a...

Originally from New York City, Berne Weiss moved from California to Central Europe following the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. An activist, Berne is also a Quaker, working for peace and social justice. Now in her late 70s, her stories of coming of age during the cultural revolution of the '60s, and eventually relocating to Hungary, where she lived and worked through the country's transition from communism to a 'sort of democracy' are a fascinating reflection on a slice of history...

I first heard Aparna Aurora speak on a Women in Business panel at the annual Lisbon Web Summit, Europe's most influential tech event, which will be live once again November 1-4, 2021. Aparna talked to a largely millennial and female audience about growing Chutnify, her Indian restaurant from its inception as a street-food concept in 2014 in Berlin, to locations in Portugal, including Lisbon, Porto, and more recently Cascais. In this podcast episode, she talks of her restlessness and moving...

Sandhya is one of the women whose story appears in my book, Women Who Walk. She talks of a happy childhood growing up in the immigrant Indian community of Mozambique, where she was born. When Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in the mid-70s, escalating civil unrest caused her parents to abandon the comfortable life they’d built, and return to Gujarat in the north west of India to start over. Three years later, when she was 10, the family migrated again this time to Lisbon, Portugal...

It's the middle of August and the height of summer in Europe, and in Portugal, where I live, that means everyone heads to the beach and life slows down. So today I thought I'd record a solo show and reflect back on the past three months and the evolution of the podcast to date, and that would be the first 10 episodes.

Marie-Pierre Nicoletti grew up in a small town in the French Alps, in a bicultural French and Italian family. After graduating college with a BA in both Applied Foreign Language for International Business in English and Italian, and Italian Language and Civilization, she moved to Paris to attend fashion school. Upon graduating, she worked for the fashion house of Yohji Yamamoto as a trilingual marketing assistant and brand manager. In late 1990, she traveled to the US for a six-month...

Yasmin Abdel-Hak was born and raised in Denmark. Her father is Egyptian. Her mother Danish. For several generations the migratory paths on both sides of her family have stretched from the Middle East to Scandinavia, the US and Europe. Her Danish childhood was somewhat unconventional as her father is Muslim and her maternal grandfather, who was in the resistance movement during World War II, is a communist and staunch atheist. In contrast, Yasmin attended a private Christian school for girls...

In the early '70s, Diana left Chicago, relocating permanently to London, where she graduated from the University of London's School of Oriental and African studies. Her postgraduate research focused on Islamic studies. Following positions at the University of Bath, and within the University of London, she was appointed Director of Education at the British Council in Hong Kong. She lectured at various educational institutions throughout China and East Asia, and during this time developed an...

Originally from Australia, Jodie and her wife Natalie have been traveling as full-time international house-and-pet sitters since early 2013. They've enjoyed 95% free accommodation all over the world thanks to their back-to-back housesits. With no home base and no residency anywhere, they travel with all they possess, which is less than 50 pounds each, enabling a sense of freedom with the minimalist lifestyle they now relish 

Samantha  Coomber left London in 1998, since then she's been a full-time freelance travel and lifestyle writer, based in Asia Pacific, including three years in Sydney, Australia followed by five years in Hanoi and five years in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, eight years in Bali, Indonesia, relocating back to Ho Chi Minh City in 2018 where she's currently based.

After studying violin at Boston Conservatory, Joia Lewis  continued college in Massachusetts, and at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow, Russia, graduating with degrees in Russian Language and Literature, and Soviet and East European studies. In 1979, she returned to the US from travels throughout Europe, Africa, India, and the middle East for graduate work in the History and Philosophy of Science. In  2018, she came full circle, back to Portugal, where she was born.

 Andrea Barton is an electrical engineer, turned career consultant, turned writer. She's lived in the U.K. and spent 12 years with her husband and two sons living in Nigeria, the United States and Qatar before we repatriating to Melbourne Australia, where she's from.  As a result of her years and experiences abroad, Andrea has compiled and edited two anthologies on the expatriate  experience. She also wrote nine stage productions tackling social themes. In Nigeria by request, she wrote about...

Carolyn McCarthy is originally from Boston in the U.S.  She has lived for the past 15 years in Chile, 12 hours south of Santiago in a rural area, where, since 1998, she's based herself as a writer for Lonely Planet. She has authored 50-plus travel guides for Lonely Planet focusing on the Americans. A fluent Spanish speaker and skilled at tough travel, Carolyn has explored the Amazon basin via dugout canoe, and solo hiked Patagonia for Lonely Planet's Tracking in the Patagonia Andes. She has...

My guest in this episode is Anouk Cleven, who is originally from the Netherlands.  Since 2019, she's lived in Lisbon.  Anouk and her husband, Mark, moved to Portugal from Brazil, where for seven years they ran a foundation, a social and educational center that Anouk founded, and which delivered English classes, computer courses, work training preparation, sport, and music classes, and healthy nutrition support to children aged 6 to 15 from vulnerable situations.    Prior to Brazil, Anouk and...

In this solo episode, I talk a bit about how this podcast came to be and what I hope to offer listeners. Women Who Walk is a continuation of the kind of conversations I had with the interviewees whose stories feature in my book, Women Who Walk. Conversations with inspiring women, who for a myriad of reasons left their countries of origin, sometimes independently, sometimes with partner and or family, en route to life in another country. And just like in the book, on this podcast we'll be...