An American expatriate who relocated to Rome to expand her career coaching job has been the focus of an online article.
Megan Fitzgerald, who was born in New York, began working in coaching unofficially in 1992, although found that after a battle with cancer she wanted to expand her business.
In an article entitled A career coach's world without borders, CNNMoney.com reports that she grossed $79,000 last year, up by more than 100 per cent on 2007.
Her career advice company Career by Choice is only three years old, but her clients have already included Microsoft and the SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan.
After a period of living in London with her husband, they decided to move to Rome in 2006 and with no grasp of the Italian language under her belt, Ms Fitzgerald decided she wanted to start a company that helped English speaking expatriates.
The transition wasn't easy, as she explained to the website.
"By the time your papers arrive at the top of some bureaucrat's pile, the law has changed," she said.
However with perseverance, she has managed to set up her business successfully.
Now, from her apartment in Rome's Trastevere, she deals with 23 clients in 12 countries and charges around $800 a month for weekly sessions and emails.
She uses Skype to have conferences with her distant clients, cutting down her own costs as the service is free and she has never met her three assistants that live in North America and the Philippines.
The article highlights the work that she does with author Brian Rothbart, who relocated to Rome with his wife.
Ms Fitzgerald urged Rothbart to streamline his message and cut down the 450 pages of articles about his search for drug-free pain relief.
In two and a half years the pair have become close, with Fitzgerald regularly giving him to-do lists up to 20 items long and helping him to set up a Facebook page, create a DAVD and launch a new website.
She has assisted a tour company to increase their amount of guides and cities and even helped one information manager at the United Nations set up a blog and enrol on a sustainable energy MBA at the University of Malta in Rome.
The International Coach Federation, which is based in Kentucky, has seen a huge growth in members in just ten years from 2,100 members to 16,600, proving what a growth area career coaching has become.
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