41-year-old lawyer relocated to Paris, has no plans of moving back to the U.S.: ‘It’s where I’m supposed to be in the world’

Paris: After law school, Adriel Sanders, 41, found work as a corporate securities, mergers and acquisitions attorney. But she didn’t enjoy practicing law. “The whole firm knew it. It was not a well-kept secret. I tried to pretend like I wanted to be a partner, but I couldn’t maintain that image. I didn’t even want to be a lawyer,” Sanders, tells CNBC Make It.

“I didn’t enjoy the work and the expectation to work all the time and I will probably be one of the only attorneys who says it, but I don’t think it’s that intellectually stimulating.”

Sanders, who goes by Adriel Felise online, quit that job and eventually went to work as general counsel for a publicly traded company. At the time, Sanders was living in Washington, D.C. and making $286,656 a year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She lived in a studio apartment and paid about $3,000 a month in rent.

“What stereotypically happens to most Black women when they work in corporate America is the type of things I experienced my whole career. You’re constantly hitting up against this glass ceiling,” Sanders says. “I was deeply and truly miserable at the very depths of my little heart and little soul. I knew that it was not sustainable.”

While working her 9-to-5, Sanders dreamt of starting her own clothing line. She even pursued photography in her free time as a way to escape the endless grind of her career.

“Photography was very much my creative outlet. For me, starting a fashion line is about doing what I should have always been doing and not about leaving a secure career. I feel like I’m stepping into my purpose,” Sanders says.

In 2017, Sanders and her two brothers went to Paris for the first time. That trip changed everything. When they first arrived in the city, Sanders was a bit disgruntled after having an uncomfortable flight. Her younger brother reminded her to look around and take in where they were.

“It instantly clicked. I was like, ’This is your home. This is where you’re supposed to be in the world and this is where you will always be,” she says. “I knew I had to move to Paris.”

Sanders traveled back to Paris several times after that first visit. “The moment I stepped off the plane, I felt like I could just breathe,” she says. In 2019, she decided she would make the move across the Atlantic.

At the beginning of 2020, Sanders quit her job, gave her landlord notice, and started the process to obtain a French visa. She contacted Adrian Leeds from HGTV’s “House Hunters International” to help find an apartment and flew to France for a few days while a moving company packed up her belongings and prepared to ship it all overseas.

Sanders landed in Paris the day before France closed its border due to the covid-19 pandemic.

“The slowness of the world meant that France sped up. We were all operating from the same level of confusion, so the good thing is that I was confused by what was happening, but so was everyone else,” Sanders says. “I arrived the day before the lockdown, so there was no one and it was a complete dystopia.”

Sanders signed a lease for a one-bedroom apartment that cost 1,550 euros, or $1,815 USD, where she lived for two years. She then moved into a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment and signed a three-year lease.

The rent was 1,980 euros or $2,319 when she first moved in. It has since increased to $2,540 USD.

Sanders lives in what they call an “unfurnished apartment” in Paris, which means she had to purchase her own kitchen cabinets, stove, and washing machine. She estimates that she spent about $5,000 on the kitchen and close to another $10,000 to make the place really feel like home.

“Could I have done it cheaper, 100% but my view is that I don’t know when I will leave so I want to have things the way I want them,” she says.

In addition to rent, Sanders spends, on average, about 963 euros or $1,128 per month on expenses, which include household bills like cable, internet, renter’s insurance, dry cleaning, electricity and gas, private health insurance, and a Navigo transportation card.

She also has an annual subscription to the Louvre, which costs 95 euros a year and a second museum card that can add an extra 50-100 euros a year to her expenses. She also pays 1,069.20 euros or $1,252 annually to a guarantor service, which allows her to continue renting in France.

When Sanders first arrived in Paris, she did some consulting as a lawyer but decided it was finally time to bet on herself. She says she had about $200,000 in her business account and $70,000 in personal savings when she quit that job and put all of her focus on creating her fashion brand, Adriel Felise, and becoming a content creator.

That money and her income from content creation helps to fund Sanders’ new business venture. Her parents are retired and have been able to help her out as well.

“I’m grateful for it because it gives me the cushion to do the runway launching for the fashion line and that to me is the most important goal. It gives me the freedom to know that I’m not going to fall and can pursue my dream,” she says.

Sanders is self-funding the production of her initial samples and prototypes, but hopes to raise at least $2 million and have her 10-piece collection ready for launch in 2026.

Sanders says leaving the United States and her corporate law career behind helped her realize she’s more resourceful than she thought. “I can use my strategic side that I learned as a lawyer, but implement it in a very creative way.” she says.

“I love fashion and I’m so happy that I can now just say that and be upfront about it because for so long it was treated as something that made me less serious.”

When Sanders was working as a lawyer, she used to take walks around her office building and dream about starting a fashion line, and now seeing it come to life still doesn’t feel real.

“There’s still a part of me that strives and pushes for more so I don’t know if I’m fully ready to say I’m proud but I feel like I’m actually happy, which I wasn’t for so long and that’s huge for me,” she says.

“My goal and desire is to inspire women — particularly black and brown women — to just pursue their dreams and goals. When they do it does not matter. The most important thing is that they be bold, move wisely, and just go for it.”

Sanders plans to keep Paris as her home base and eventually buy a home in the countryside. Since moving, Sanders has traveled all over France, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, and more. She is currently making plans to spend the rest of the summer in the Loire Valley or Normandy in northern France.

“I wish I had had the courage to move sooner. I wish I had the courage to do it after my first semester of law school to either drop out or enroll in business school and do something different that would have given me more options and choice to not get pigeonholed into something that I knew from the beginning I didn’t want to be,” she says.

“I know that Americans really love to classify based upon age, race, etc. but I don’t want to be classified as anything other than a woman who believed in herself enough to ignore the naysayers and go for her hopes and dreams.”