‘In Ireland people tell me their life stories in the elevator or on a taxi ride’

When she was 13 years old, Gina London wrote her first letter to the editor of the local newspaper in the town of Muncie in Indiana. A voracious reader, she spent her teens years reading the work of writers from across the US in the hopes of developing her own writing skills and one day becoming a journalist.

“I had an interest in journalism from a young age but had no contacts and no network of family members that worked in journalism or television. I simply had a dream and I know that sounds corny, but that’s really it. I wanted to be a journalist and tell stories.”

London grew up in the small town of Farmland in Indiana. When she was 11 years old, her father, a corporate pilot, was killed in a plane crash. She says that watching her mother’s strength in the face of such adversity taught her about the resilience needed when faced with dark and desperate times.

“It was the way she held herself when my dad died. She was probably clinically depressed but yet she kept going and that determination has always stuck with me. She already had an undergraduate degree but was a stay-at-home mom. Then, when she was 34 years old, she went back to school and got her masters in deaf education.”

After her father’s death, London began spending more time with her maternal grandfather. “He had every National Geographic and read them all but never travelled. But he had a mind that travelled, that was very open and eager to learn. That global perspective spoke a lot to me.”

When London graduated high school, instead of following in the footsteps of the majority of her female classmates who got married and began working on the local farms, she went to university to study journalism and political science.

Her first job was at the Orlando Sentinel newspaper and from there she moved to Washington DC and began working for the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill. However, following the advice of a mentor, London quickly moved from politics back into journalism.

“He told me ‘you better get out of here before you become too political and if you start making too much money you’re not gonna want to become a journalist’.”

London found a job at the local Fox news station where worked on the overnight shift writing and producing content for the morning show. She was then offered work as a freelance writer with CNN.

“This was before the Fox News channel launched in 1996. At that time CNN and Fox weren’t competitors and Fox was just the local channel. I would work overnight at the Fox station, leave my car in the parking lot and then take the metro down to the CNN bureau. Sometimes I was there till 8pm, I’d take the metro back to the Fox station, pick up my car, drive home, sleep for like three hours and then go back and do it all over again.”

London eventually began working full-time as a CNN news correspondent and in 1996 was offered the opportunity to spend a year working with journalists in Romania. "That was when the world outside of travel vacation awakened to me. I saw what people had gone through in closed-off Communist settings. It would probably be like what Cuba was or North Korea still is."

London went on to work internationally both as a journalist and communications specialist in countries including Indonesia, Tunisia, Cambodia, Macedonia, Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Nigeria. In 2003 she decided to move on from journalism.

“I was with CNN for seven years and it was a great run but I was living out of a suitcase as a breaking news reporter. I hadn’t had a plant, I hadn’t had a cat, I hadn’t had a date or hadn’t taken a vacation in seven years.”

London spent a few years working for a democracy institute in Egypt before moving to France where her daughter Lulu was born in 2007. After a couple of years in Italy, London and her daughter arrived in Cork in 2014.

"I decided to come to Ireland for business opportunities. It seemed like a great place to do business and an equally great place to raise my young daughter. That, coupled with the sense of community and safety that I felt growing up as a child in Indiana."

London now works as a communications consultant with the marketing company Fuzion. Her daughter has settled well into her new school in Cork. “She’s very flexible because she lived the first couple of years in Paris, then Italy, she’s fluent in Italian and now she’s loving learning Irish. She’s even put the fada on the end of her last ‘u’ because she’s decided she has a fada in her name now.”

“She’s a global kid and sees the world through global eyes. It’s great for me knowing she’s American but can also fit in wherever she is. She doesn’t have those blinders some American kids can have growing up, where they’re not open or aware of a broader world around them.”

After two years in Ireland, London feels completely at ease in her new home. She admits that no country is perfect, but despite Ireland’s flaws says she loves the people’s “friendly, ‘never-met-a-stranger’ attitude”.

“I feel serious that I’ve found my place in the world. I’m an open person by nature and make friends easily, but here I’ve had people tell me their life stories in the course of just a short taxi or elevator ride.”

Asked about her thoughts on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election, London says she believes the American political system will survive whatever outcome emerges next week. "If the election goes a way that I hope it doesn't, then our cheques and balances are still in place, and there will still be enough moving to the centre, whoever gets in the White House. That should go a little way to healing our wounds.

“It’s a very important time globally. It’s important to remember that we are ultimately all people. We are on this planet for a short amount of time. I got that from my dad. At an early age I learned that life is tenuous, so don’t take it for granted.”