Profiles in Franceformation

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 mo...

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 th...

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...

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 an...

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 mate...

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 F...

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 d...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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 foc...

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 Franc...

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 libérale Commerçant Profession artistique Passeport talent entrepreneur You’ll hear abou...

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, explor...

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 enam...

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 M...

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...

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 t...

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...

Welcome to Episode #31 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, I’m interviewing Donnie Calloway, international Ferrari man of mystery and fancy Paris hotels. Donnie first began intriguing the Americans in France facebook group by sharing his pictures of Ferraris driving in traffic-free Paris in front of important monuments during covid, and today, we can...

Welcome to Episode #30 of Profiles in Franceformation. I’m your host, Allison Grant Lounes, and this week, I’m interviewing high school English teacher Kayla Carpenzano. Kayla originally came to France with the TAPIF English assistant program, and has returned several times, with different visas, to pursue her dream of living and teaching English in France, before securing a permanent position wit...

Welcome to Episode #29 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host Allison Grant Lounes. On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Ivy Dai, an American who came to France to study as a pastry chef. She opened her café in the south of France, and is now selling it post-Covid to pursue an ecommerce career in health and wellness products. We’ll also hear about… What brought Ivy to France initially The...

Welcome to Episode #28 of Profiles in Franceformation, I’m your host Allison Grant Lounes. On this week’s episode, I speak with Porter Scott, who moved to France in 1980 to study art. He’s responsible for bringing both pecans and microwave popcorn to France, and his career has spanned real estate, American food imports, and French antiques dealings, before returning to his true calling as a fine a...

Welcome to Episode #27 of Profiles in Franceformation. This is your host, Allison Grant Lounes. And today I'm interviewing Kate Bickers, who retired to France post-COVID. Since arriving in the Var near Nice, Kate has launched a Singles in France Facebook group and has become involved with the American Club of the Riviera, jumping right into creating a fun and exciting new life in France. Duri...