Expats
Dusty Tubbs
Full-Time Panama Expat
With over 30 years’ experience of globetrotting, courtesy of the U.S. Navy, Dusty decided it was time for a change. Retiring from the Navy, Dusty next became a professor for the Ventura Community College District before going to work with a big box retailer. Repositioning to Hawaii he anticipated living out his retirement years in paradise. The downturn in the economy prompted Dusty and his wife Carolyn to seek new opportunities and new adventures overseas. In 2013 they became full-time adventure seekers residing in Chitré, Panama.
Darlene Gunter
Full-Time Expat
Darlene Gunter has been an expat for 18 years in the Dominican Republic. A former business owner in Canada, she gave up everything for the adventure. From sales, to consulting, to owning and running companies in The Dominican Republic… she’s done it all. She has lived in several parts of the country which gave her a broader perspective of life in the DR. She currently employs 75 people in 8 different businesses. Darlene regards her DR life as her paradise.
Lee Harrison
Full-Time Mexico Expat
Lee is Latin America Editor and Senior Property Correspondent for Live and Invest Overseas.
After spending six years flying with the US Navy, he completed a successful career in the nuclear power industry. Taking advantage of a post-merger early retirement offer, he left the US in 2001 at age 49 and retired to Cuenca, Ecuador.
Since that time, Lee has enjoyed and invested in properties in Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico. And beginning in 2001, he’s written for a number of publications about living abroad, travel writing, and property investing.
Lee has obtained residency in Ecuador, Uruguay, Colombia, and Mexico. And he’s visited as many as 17 countries per year throughout Europe and Latin America, traveling and writing about retirement and investment opportunities.
Lee’s network of property insiders from those travels, along with his understanding of local cultures and languages, has helped him develop insight into local property markets that only the locals usually possess.
Wendy Howarter
Full-Time Colombia Expat
After 23 years of living in Northern Illinois, Darren and Wendy left their careers, family and friends last year and moved to Medellin Colombia. Wendy was a partner in a mid-sized law firm while Darren split his time between financial investing and fine wine sales. Although they loved their small community of 4,000 people, and the house they had custom built 17 years earlier, they hated the long, bitter winters and the stressful careers which left them longing for the weekend and yearly vacations. After discovering Live & Invest Overseas they attended their first conference in Orlando Florida which opened the doors to the possibility of living overseas, sooner rather than later.
As a result of the first conference, they narrowed their choices to three countries – Ecuador, Belize and Colombia. They attended LIO conferences in each country and spent additional time in each location, renting an apartment and living like locals. Once they had their boots on the ground, they knew that Medellin was going to be their next home. They sold their beautiful house and most of the furnishings, donated or sold personal belongings, cars, clothes, etc. and quit their jobs. They bought one-way tickets and landed in Colombia on October 28th.
Darren continues to trade on the Stock Market via high-speed internet (which is available all over the city) and Wendy has found a new passion in internet and travel writing. They have found an incredible apartment to rent, have made many new friends and are learning Spanish with a private tutor three days a week. As Darren likes to tell people, they are now – Living the Dream in Medellin!
Lauren Brown
Full-Time Chile Expat
Lauren Brown is known in her community as a connector, event organizer, an avid entrepreneur, a marketing maven and a seasoned digital nomad/ serial expat.
Lauren graduated with honors from Loyola University in Maryland with a double major in Spanish and International business. For the last 10 years Lauren has built a career working in Startups in San Francisco and throughout Latin America, while also launching businesses of her own. Her specialties have been in sales and marketing, specifically social media marketing for businesses.
Originally from Massachusetts, Lauren has had many homes over the last decade including San Francisco, Mexico City, Bogota, Medellin, and now Santiago, Chile, where she has been residing for the last 3 years (7+ Years in total as an Expat in Latam).
Online businesses and social media strategies freed Lauren from the 9-5 life and allowed her to live abroad and travel the world. As a result, Lauren is now a coach for want-to-be expats, teaching mindset, business and marketing strategies so that anyone can show up confidently online and launch a successful business so that they can live and work from anywhere. This September, Lauren is launching Anywhere Entrepreneur, an online community for expats and a podcast featuring stories of expat and digital nomad life.
You can find more information about her coaching programs, podcast, and book at: www.Bylaurenbrown.com you can also follow her on Instagram instagram.com/bylaurenbrown.
Raymond Setzer
Full-Time Italy Expat
Raymond Setzer is a retired CPA who retired to Italy with his wife Heidi in December of 2016 after having spent fifteen years in Alaska and another twenty in Wisconsin. Having had quite enough of long and severe winters, they fulfilled a long-term dream of retirement in Italy. Their original landing spot was Casalanguida, a very small village in Abruzzo of about eight hundred people but recently moved to the larger city of Lanciano, a medium sized Abruzzo city of about thirty-five thousand with a rich history and many cultural activities.
Alyson Sheldrake
Full-Time Portugal Expat
Alyson Sheldrake was born in Birmingham in 1968. She has always loved art and painting, although she found little time for such pleasures, working full-time after graduation. She joined the Devon and Cornwall Police in 1992 and served for thirteen years, before leaving to work in the field of education. She became a Director of Education for the Church of England in Devon in 2008.
Once her husband Dave retired from the Police, their long-held dream of living in the sun could become a reality. Alyson handed in her notice, and with her dusty easel and set of acrylic paints packed and ready to move, they started their new adventure living in the beautiful Algarve in Portugal in 2011.
Alyson is the author of the award-winning and popular Algarve Blog, and has also been a keynote speaker for several years at the annual ‘Live and Invest in Portugal’ international conference.
She is now an accomplished and sought-after artist working alongside her husband Dave, a professional photographer. Being able to bring their much-loved hobbies and interests to life has been a wonderful bonus to their new life in the Algarve.
She is also an author, and her first book ‘Living the Dream – in the Algarve, Portugal’ is full of useful advice, enjoyable adventures and hilarious accounts of their Algarve life in the sun. She is busy writing the sequel.
Kat Kalashian
Editor-in-Chief, Live and Invest Overseas
Full-Time France Expat
Kat has grown up around the world, living in the United States, Ireland, France, and Panama. Growing up as a young expat, she is familiar with the trials and tribulations of an overseas move and the adjustments that must be made in every new destination. Living and learning through experience, she now considers no one place home and feels more comfortable in new environs than in familiar ones.
After living in the tropics of Panama for seven years, she and her husband relocated back to Paris, France, in 2018, where they now live full-time with their new daughter, American cat, and Panamanian dog.
At this year’s Retire Overseas Virtual Conference, Kat will introduce you to some of her favorite corners of Europe and be part of our big-topic panel discussions where she’ll share her hard-earned secrets to expat survival.
Robin Davie
Full-Time Cyprus Expat
Originally from Brighton in the U.K., Robin Davie relocated to Northern Cyprus in 1991 to teach at a local university, the ex-copper mining town of Lefke (linguistically, Cyprus means copper). Finding the Lefke area delightful, he stayed on for many years before moving to Nicosia. There he started a language school, International House Nicosia, and lived very happily among the Cypriot community.
He married a Turkish Cypriot, Zuhal, in 1999 and has two Turkish Cypriot/British daughters. They have Turkish first names, Greek middle names, and a British surname. That’ll be Cyprus. He has been to every corner of the island and now lives in the lovely village of Baglikoy.
Jeff and Joch Woodruff
Full-Time Portugal Expats
Jeff and Joch met in 2007 while volunteering on the board of a San Francisco non-profit organization. It sounds silly to say so, but their eyes met at that first meeting. Both knew their lives would be connected. Jeff worked at the Hilton in the financial district and Joch traveled internationally as a mentor/trainer of behavioral health group facilitators. Jeff lived in nearby Vallejo and Joch lived in Oakland. It wasn’t long before they rented a work/live loft in the Jingle-town area of Oakland and watched their cats, who thought they were solo divas, learn how to be sisters.
During their first few dates one thing was clear- they both enjoyed travel and dreamed of retiring together. They started an ever-growing list of distant countries and cities each wanted to visit.
Jeff and Joch married in 2013, five weeks after the Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage in the US. Jeff had transitioned to a career with the state of California in the Employment Development Department, the largest agency of the state. Ultimately all career paths with the state lead to the capital city. Jeff and Joch bought a home in nearby Elk Grove and friendships thrived in a back yard that featured a pool, hot tub and fire pit.
Joch turned 70 in 2019. The stories and dreams about retirement began to feel real. Jeff suggested a January birthday trip to consider moving to Portugal. They flew to the Algarve, spent a couple of weeks exploring, visited Lisboa for three days and enjoyed a day in Sintra. They added two days and an overnight in Dublin on their return home. The trip clarified a vision to retire and to move to Portugal.
May 2019 was when Joch finally retired and hung up his trainer’s hat. Jeff suggested attendance at the LAIO annual conference in Houston. He thought attendance would assist the couple in formulating a plan. And Jeff certainly was right. After comparing Portugal to numerous other retirement destinations Portugal remained the right decision for both of them. They met João G Gil Figuera, a lawyer with GFDL, who became their facilitator during the visa and residency process. They met Luis da Silva of Senior Living Villages who supported their community discovery and apartment selection process. They met friends from other parts of the US who remain in contact to this day. They moved to Portugal a year ago and reside in Braga. Their forever condo apartment is being built as they practice their Portuguese and plot post-pandemic trips around the world.
Bart Walters
Full-Time Thailand Expat
Bart Walters is a 60-year-old American who has lived in Thailand for more than twenty years.
He retired early from a publishing and marketing career to find a new adventure in the Land of Smiles. Since then, he’s completed some interesting real estate projects, become a working journalist and copywriter as well as a teacher in a Thai university.
Bart has lived in Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai and currently resides in Jomtien Beach, on Thailand’s Eastern Seaboard.
Sophia Titley
Editorial Director, Live and Invest Overseas
Born overseas, Sophia Titley has lived everywhere from Saudi Arabia to Colombia, Indonesia to Spain. More recently, she calls the U.K. home. Originally from Canada, she studied political science and Spanish at the University of British Columbia and enjoys traveling, reading, and cooking in her spare time.
Esther Milanzi
Full-Time Indonesia Expat
Esther Milanzi grew up in North Carolina. She has been an educator for nine years. She has lived and taught in Florida, New York, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, and now resides in Bali, Indonesia, with her husband, who is also from North Carolina, whom she met on a beach in Thailand. She has taken some time away from education to focus on writing her first novel. She is also developing two businesses as an education consultant and a writing coach.
