Valérie Chaussonnet is a French Native speaker. She was born in Paris and spent her happy teenage years in Provence, then studied French literature, linguistics and languages in Bordeaux and The Sorbonne University in Paris, and Soviet Studies at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris and The Red University in Kiev, Ukraine, before moving to the US in 1984. There she studied Anthropology and Arctic Studies at UC Berkeley and then in Canada at Laval University in Quebec-City, including fieldwork in Nunavut among the Inuit. She moved to Washington DC to work with the curatorial team of the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian Institution on a major international exhibition, “Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska” for eleven years, while also attending the Corcoran Art School. She founded La Petite Provence after moving to Austin with two small children, as a way to stay with them and to share her love of the French language and culture with her new Austin friends. In addition to leading and teaching at La Petite Provence, Valérie is a professional, exhibiting sculptor and painter. You can hear her talk about her life, journey and passions here.