Our story.
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
Are you sitting there with a browser full of open tabs?
Expat forums, Facebook groups, signal chats, filled with conflicting opinions and mostly negative ones?
There are the travel articles that inspire you but aren’t written for permanent living, and then there are entirely new concepts like cost-of-living calculators and tax residency requirements - which you’re juggling alongside a whole lotta guilt about even wanting to move in the first place?
Then you have landed in the right place. Assuming that you’re also LGBTQ+ or soooooo queer adjacent that your algorithm sent you here, let’s get to work and close those tabs one by one.
We built Rainbow Relocation Strategies to center the needs of queer folks and their families looking to move, live and thrive abroad.
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Rainbow Relocation Strategies didn't start as a company. It started as a coffee date with friend.
About Jess Drucker
First, let us take you waaaaaay back.
The year was 1999…
Jess went to Costa Rica as an exchange student, and it changed the trajectory of her life. She couldn’t believe how much was going on in the world while she sat in auditoriums in middle America. She loved Costa Rica, and eevn extended her stay. While there, she travelled to Guatemala on a three-day bus ride up through Central America. She loved loved Antigua, and decided she’d move there next. After that was Germany. Then the UK. Then four years as a full time nomad.
All in, Jess lived abroad for 15 years.
She was a teacher, a Master’s student, a copywriter, worked at three British tourist boards and two tech companies.
Jess also traveled to 40+ countries, became fluent in Spanish and German, hitchhiked Patagonia, lava-boarded in Nicaragua, and was almost kidnapped by a monk in Cambodia. It was all quite an adventure.
Right after hiking the Salktantay Trek to Machu Pichu in Peru, a breakup and a broken ankle in the same week sent her home to Chicago in the dead of winter with no plan, no health insurance, and no professional network in the States.
But if there is one thing expats know how to do, it’s rebuild their lives…
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When Rainbow was born.
Jess met her now-wife and they moved to Brooklyn (obviously). A new friend mentioned she was moving abroad and asked if Jess had any advice.
Oh boy, did she.
One coffee session led to a follow-up email on the subway ride back home that morphed into a 30,000 word Going-Away PDF — a slightly strange gift.
But that PDF became the first draft of her book, How To Move Abroad And Why It's The Best Thing You'll Do.
The book brought her her very first relocation clients.
The business blossomed from there.
Then, in 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and it became clear that systematic legislation against women and queer folks was going to continue.
Rainbow Relocation Strategies and a focus on queer folks and families was born.
We’ve never looked back.
The company has grown the same way it started: organically, by word of mouth, one honest conversation at a time. We've now helped over 1,200 one-on-one clients and built a community of over 10,000+ LGBTQ+ international queer folks moving and living abroad.
✔Rainbow starts with you at the very beginning.
Should you even move at all?
Maybe. Maybe not.
What visa pathways are realistic for you?
Let’s find out together BEFORE you invest in a particular country or visa pathway.
Strategy comes first.
The country comes after.
That's the opposite of how most of this industry works.
Queer family is family, so we treat you like family.
We’ll be honest with you. Even when it’s not what you want to hear.
We center you. We don't lie to you. We will never hype a country, a visa, or a timeline just to keep you paying.