Our Entrepreneurs Abroad feature this month is a chapter from my new book Adventurers Abroad: The New American Expat Generation.

“I have always had a passion for travel and different cultures ever since I could remember. When I was in the seventh grade, I started renting foreign films and taking French. That was how I started to see other parts of the world – through film.”

That passion has led forty-four-year-old Megan Fitzgerald to Paris, London, Rome and now Singapore, where she operates her business, Career By Choice. As an expat and international career coach, she helps professionals and executives build and accelerate their careers abroad.

Megan got a taste of moving early in life. She was born in New York, but her father, an engineer for a major corporation, moved the family often.

“As a child I lived in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida and Maryland. All of those moves probably helped me learn to adapt to new surroundings and inspired me to want to learn about new places.”

After high school, Megan headed to Providence, Rhode Island where she attended the prestigious Ivy League school, Brown University. She got a degree in International Relations because she knew even then that she wanted to live and work internationally. She also got a degree in Semiotics – the study of how meaning is created. This allowed her the opportunity to see how meaning is constructed in different cultures and media, particularly film.

“When I was at Brown, I also spent a year in Paris. While in Paris, I was able to travel around France. After I finished my studies there I also was fortunate enough to travel all around Western and Eastern Europe. For me, exploring new countries and the international lifestyle was incredibly exciting.”

After receiving her undergraduate degree in 1992, Megan headed south to Washington D.C., where she would spend the next ten years of her life. She started her career working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in international education and training. She designed business training programs for entrepreneurs from developing and transitional economies in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Early on during her time with USAID, Megan met Josh McCloud, her partner of 21 years and now her husband.

“We were very compatible. I think that one of the things that brought us together was our love of travel and other cultures. Josh’s parents had been expats, so he grew up abroad. We made a conscious decision when we lived in Washington to move overseas and live a truly international lifestyle.”

“After many years working in international education and training, I was able to design a master’s degree in Multimedia Design and Communications at American University in Washington D.C. I was interested in leveraging multi-media and technology to facilitate international education, training and cultural exchange.”

After she completed her master’s degree, she took a job at an international arts organization, also based in Washington. Megan helped facilitate grants and did program development and organizational development for arts education organizations around the world.

“I did that for about a year. Josh and I had made a plan to move to London at that point, but right before we were about to leave I got cancer. So I stayed in the States to get cancer treatment while Josh left for London, having secured a job in a multinational IT company. As soon as my treatment was completed I joined him in London.”