Après-Midi Recap

Living the Parisian Dream, Setting up Shop in Paris – everything from the Eiffel tower and French business culture to horseback riding and data privacy…

Live wire Amber Johns came to Paris for a plum job, then discovered the cultural differences in the workplace that encouraged her to leave it and go off on her own to create her own firm, A. Johns Global. Her practice focuses on international business strategy and compliance, advising companies on international corporate structuring and compliance and specializes in developing international operation strategies and compliance programs for multinational companies, particularly, between the United States, Europe and Africa. She has also had extensive experience in negotiation and managing international investments and development projects in Ghana and South Africa and distribution and purchase agreements for US companies with offices in France and the UK.

Amber is fluent in French, serves on the Boards of the Africa Global Chamber of Commerce and Henry Booth House. She is a member of the Chicago Bar Association, the Black Women Lawyers Association, the Cook County Bar Association, and she is involved with the French American Chamber of Commerce, the International Trade Association of Greater Chicago and is an Advisor for the African Business Portal.

She and Adrian co-starred in a House Hunters International episode that recently aired internationally. This is how they met.

At Après-Midi, she told us her life’s story—how she dreamed of living in France, how she got here as a student, how she became a lawyer and how she returned to France…and is now fully realizing her dream. Inspiring to see a young person work so hard to achieve their goals. Amber embodies all that is possible, especially during the pandemic, at a time when it would be doubly difficult to achieve. The audience had tons of questions for her and no doubt, were awed by her tenacity, intelligence and industriousness.

We had a formidable group of both regulars and newcomers as well as a few of our past speakers, such as Craig Carlson, Lisa Anselmo, Edith de Belleville, William Jordan and April Petit, as well as the Director from the House Hunters International episode, Anna Prichard.