Black Women Are Banding Together to Leave America Behind. Here’s Why

In 2015, Stephanie Perry left her job as a pharmacy technician on the night shift and spent 12 months traveling across Southeast Asia, Australia and parts of Europe. “I felt like my life revolved around my work, but traveling around the world showed me that there is another way,” says Perry, who is Black and in her 40s. “You can have a full life in other countries that we don’t necessarily have in the US.”

She wasn’t alone. The past three years of Covid-19 and increased social upheaval in America have caused a small but significant exodus of Black professional women from the US in search of a better quality of life. They are packing up, some with kids in tow, starting businesses abroad and not looking back.