Irina Pravet's mission is to live a life she loves, abroad, while helping others see things through new eyes. Born in Romania, raised in Canada and now living in Finland, Irina has had to learn languages to adapt to the big transitions going on in life. From Romanian to French to English and most recently, Finnish, Irina became fascinated by each language's ability to help her shape her identity and reveal new and sometimes contradictory perspectives about the world. Based on her time abroad since 1993, Irina brings together experiences to empower foreigners to create lives they love abroad, whether the current challenges are related to language, culture, or to a greater personal transition.
In her youth, Irina Pravet was never a kid who knew what she wanted to be when she ‘grew up.’ As she explains to us, “I never had any idea. But this language thing was something that I could do and as is the case for most of us, the things that we’re really good at, we’re completely blind to.”
Skip forward to her adult years, when after reading a book Irina was inspired to brainstorm 100 business ideas. It was somewhere around idea #32 when she realized that being a Finnish language coach was the right idea for her because she “was learning what everyone calls the hardest language, but I was doing it differently than everyone else.”
Irina goes on to explain that “One of the most difficult things was that I had to let go of all the things I learned in school for so long, and realize that this was ok, even if I spent 7 years studying it.”
