I spent four years teaching English in Russia. Not in Moscow. In a smaller city, where I was the only American for miles and spoke almost no Russian when I arrived.
I learned fast that relocating somewhere means building a life from scratch. I relied on the teachers I worked alongside. We made a deal: half our time together they practiced English with me, and the other half I learned Russian with them. That community was not optional. It was how I understood the city, found housing, navigated bureaucracy, and figured out where I actually fit.
That experience stayed with me. So did watching my father live and work across the former Soviet space. Moscow. Tbilisi. Almaty. Yerevan. I visited him in Moscow and Tbilisi. I saw firsthand that the same city feels completely different depending on who you are and what you bring with you.
I spent the next 15 years in product leadership. I built product teams at Gannett and USA TODAY, then led editorial platform strategy for the Wall Street Journal at Dow Jones. The tools journalists use to plan, write, edit, and curate the news. I know how to take a complex, messy problem and build something that makes it navigable.
WhereToAdvisor came from a conversation with close friends. They are an LGBTQIA+ couple weighing a move abroad. One speaks multiple languages and works in a field that travels well. The other speaks only English and works in the service industry. They needed more than a visa pathway. They needed healthcare they could actually access, housing in their budget, and a place that would be genuinely safe for them. Not just legally, but socially. Daily life safe.
I started researching. I found plenty of tools covering one piece of the picture. Visa requirements. Cost of living. Healthcare rankings. Nothing folded all of it together, and nothing asked the question that mattered most to my friends: will you actually be accepted there?
That gap is what I built WhereToAdvisor to close. The platform scores destinations across safety, healthcare, economics, education, governance, and mobility. It also scores acceptance: tolerance, legal protections, integration outcomes, and how a specific place has historically treated people who look, love, or live like you. The same destination scores differently depending on who is asking. That is the point.
I am not building this because I want to leave. I am building it because people I care about are trying to figure out where they can thrive, and the tools that exist were not built for them.