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 interest in the history of the Silk Road. Today, Diana has more than 40 years of experience studying and exploring Ancient Near and Middle East history, languages, religion, and culture. Her research now covers the history, art and archaeology, cultures, and religions covering over 5,000 miles of road and 3000 years of history from Rome, Italy to Xian, China and down through the Indian sub-continent.

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. Jodie, and Nat's website is InternationalHousesitting.com 

Asia-Pacific Travel & Lifestyle writer, Samantha Coomber, talks about working in Vietnam and Indonesia for the past 19 years living the "Anthony Bourdain experience from a woman's perspective." Samantha  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. She has contributed and updated travel guidebooks such as Frommer’s, Fodors, Rough Guides and Insight Guides, mainly on Vietnam. Her work has been published in countless international publications and in-flight airline magazines. She is author of the first edition of Insight Guides: Hanoi and Northern Vietnam Pocket Guide and co-author of the first edition Inside Guides: Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City Smart Guide; and she contributed to the travel focus, compilation books: To Vietnam with Love; To Asia with Love; and Travelers Tales from Heaven and Hell.

Joia Lewis was born in Portugal to American missionary parents during the Salazar dictatorship. Ten years later, her family moved back to the US. After studying violin at Boston Conservatory, she 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. Looking for a way to continue study in both the humanities and the sciences, led to a Ph.D. In the Philosophy of Science from Indiana University. Following three decades of teaching scientific reasoning, philosophy of mind, logic and medical ethics in California and Minnesota, with a hiatus has software publications manager in Silicon Valley, she returned in 2018 to her birthplace, Portugal.

.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's also written nine stage productions tackling social themes. In Nigeria by request, she wrote about child trafficking, malaria, gambling, safety, and heart disease. Eight of those stage productions were produced in Lagos, and two were performed at Woodlands Preparatory School in Houston, Texas. Andrea is  also an accomplished dancer, and in this episode, she talks about how she combined her writing, dancing and stage production as she moved country-to-country. Her website is BrightsideStoryStudio.com

Carolyn McCarthy is originally from Boston.  She has lived for the past 15 years in Chile, 12 hours south of Santiago in a rural area, where she's based herself as a writer, authoring 50-plus travel guides for Lonely Planet focusing on the Americas. 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 Trekking in the Patagonia Andes. She has documented life in some of the most remote corners of Latin America. More recently, Carolyn transitioned to working remotely as Global Communications Coordinator for Tompkins Conservation. The foundation's landscape-scale projects focus on restoring native species in Chile and re-wilding threatened wildlife, such as the Jaguar and giant otter in Argentina.  Carolyn's website is carolynmccarthy.org

Originally from the Netherlands, Anouk Cleven has lived in Lisbon since 2017. 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 Mark worked for three years for Voluntary Services Abroad in Indonesia where their work placements were on two different islands. Because of the pandemic and because of the nature of her work, Anouk now works remotely from home in Lisbon as the Director of Sales and Marketing for the Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary. 

In this solo Episode, writer and host of Women Who Walk, Louise Ross, talks about how this podcast came to be and what she hopes to offer listeners, such as conversations with women doing extraordinary things, independent women travelers, inspiring women who for a myriad of reasons left their countries of origin, sometimes making multiple international moves, for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom.