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Mariam Navaid Ottimofiore is a Pakistani expat author, writer, researcher and economist.
When she was 19 years old, Mariam left her home in Karachi with a blue suitcase and a one-way ticket to Boston. She has lived in nine countries as an expat child and an expat adult: The Kingdom of Bahrain, the United States,Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Ghana. 17 years and four continents later, her life on the move as an ATCK is messy. A 40-foot container, an expat husband from another corner of the world and two children born 3,000 miles apart have added complexity, challenges and many joys to living a multicultural, multilingual and multi-mobile life. She currently lives in Accra, Ghana, with her German/Italian husband and her German-Pakistani-Italian kids, born in Singapore and Dubai.
Passionate about languages and cultures, Mariam speaks fluent Urdu, English, Hindi and German with some Italian, Danish and Arabic on the side. She is an expert at making embarrassing mistakes in every new language she picks up, is perpetually lost in every new city she calls home and can never remember her new address or where she packed those suede boots! Mariam has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science from Mount Holyoke College in the US and specialized in Economic Development at the University of Sussex in the UK. Her corporate career saw her work at Morgan Stanley in Houston, USA and Maersk Oil Trading, A.P Moller Maersk in Copenhagen, Denmark. Mariam made a career change to a full-time writer in 2012. She is the co-author of two books Export Success and Industrial Linkages in South Asia (Palgrave Macmillan 2009) and Insights and Interviews from the 2017 Families in Global Transition Conference (Summertime Publishing 2018). She has been the Content Editor for Fuchsia Magazine in Singapore, and her expat writing has been published in Expat Connect Dubai, Global Living Magazine, Expat Living Singapore, Expat Living Hong Kong, The Huffington Post, Sassy Mama Dubai, Multicultural Kid Blogs and FIDI Global Relocation.
Mariam's expat life has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) for Super Soul Sunday and her expat blog 'And Then We Moved To' has been shortlisted for 'Best Parent Blog 2017' by Time Out Dubai Kids. She has also been a conference speaker at the Families in Global Transition conference in The Hague in 2017 and 2018.
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