How I Did It: Seth Juarez on Building a Media Career and a Life in Paris
Seth Juarez’s path to France was shaped less by careful planning and more by a steady pursuit of what intrigued him. Born in Albuquerque and raised in Texas, he might have followed the well-worn path of small-town life, but instead he picked up a camera, learned French, and eventually carved out a life and a place for himself in Paris.
“I thought I was going to be a broadcast engineer,” Seth says. “I was already working at a CBS affiliate by the time I hit college, doing everything from camera to prompter to master control. But once I realized I was paying to sit through classes teaching what I already did at work, I had a moment. I thought: maybe I should study something else—something that opens up more doors.”
That “something” turned out to be French. Not because of some starry-eyed romantic ideal, he insists, but because it sounded different, felt foreign, and offered the promise of speaking to more of the world. “Spanish was already in the house,” he laughs, “so French just felt more... exotic.”
A First Taste of French Life
A study abroad trip to Lyon in the early 2000s sealed the deal. “I was sitting at a bus stop, talking to this old guy, and I realized I understood every word he said. That moment stuck with me.” That experience planted the seed, and over time, France pulled him back.
There was the TAPIF assistantship in Normandy, where a series of bureaucratic mishaps landed Seth in the spare bedroom of a local education official’s home. “She didn’t even tell her husband before bringing me home,” he recalls. That led to a year living above a retired city official’s garage, paying €100 a month in rent, tallying grocery bills in a spiral notebook, and eating dinner surrounded by old-school French intellectuals critiquing his accent and educating him on Jacques Brel.
“It was immersive, completely. And it spoiled me. I thought, this is how I want to live.”
The Detour: A Decade Back in Texas
But then came a detour: a long-term relationship, a move back to the U.S., a house in Austin, a first bulldog, and a job in television retail sales. It wasn’t all bad—he helped launch a reverse-auction jewelry channel and eventually ran its broadcast department—but it wasn’t France.
What brought him back? Craigslist, oddly enough.
Frustrated with the daily grind and his three-hour commute in Austin, he began searching for jobs closer to home and stumbled across a Craigslist ad.
“I found this job listing that mentioned French and broadcast software, and I applied even though I didn’t think I was techy enough. Turns out, I had exactly the mix of skills they needed.”
That listing led to a support role with Cressence, a Paris-based company looking to expand support services in the United States for the French media software company Dalet. He was soon troubleshooting newsroom tech problems in French, making midnight calls for France Télévision, and rebuilding servers in his apartment. It was the bridge to the life he wanted that he didn’t know existed.
Crossing Over: The Move to France
By 2013, Dalet offered him a full French contract, and Seth, along with his then-wife and their bulldog, moved to Paris.
“The visa process was no joke,” he admits. “But it was worth it. Getting the visa was complex—they had to prove they couldn’t find anyone else for the job, pay a fee, and submit paperwork to multiple agencies,” he said. “But they did it.”
Despite the professional success, Seth says that settling into daily life in France took patience.
“The timeline here is different,” he said. “You think something will take two weeks. It takes two years.”
Whether it was navigating French administrative tasks or trying to convert his U.S. driver’s license (he still hasn’t), Seth learned to manage expectations. “You can do everything right and still get told no. That’s just part of it.”
Adapting to French Life
Since then, Seth’s career has grown in tandem with his French integration. He began in a technical support role, but soon moved into leading professional training and services for Dalet across the EMEA and APAC regions—training TV and radio teams around the world and helping them implement major broadcast deployments. The global scope of the work not only deepened his expertise but also gave him the foundation to eventually launch his own company. Along the way, he also met Madeleine, now his wife, and began building a community, albeit slowly.
“French friends take time. But once they’re in, they’re in,” he says. “Some of my former colleagues flew out for our wedding. That’s real.”
Now more than a decade into his French life, Seth is applying for citizenship and launching his own consultancy. Last year, Seth navigated a career transition and leaned into his network, ultimately negotiating a severance and finding a way to use every French labor code resource available to him.
“It’s one of the things Americans don’t understand. The French system is slow, yes, but if you learn how to use it, it works. You just have to show up three times for everything: the first two will fail, and the third will maybe work.”
Asked what advice he’d give someone thinking of making the leap, he doesn’t hesitate: “Learn the language. If you’re not willing to do that, don’t come. You’re not really living here unless you can talk to the old guy at the bus stop.”
And the best part of life in France?
“Honestly? The struggle,” he grins. “The fight with the prefecture. The sense that you’ve earned your place here. That moment when a French waiter shakes your hand on the way out just because you asked how his day’s going. That’s the hidden reward. That’s when you’re like—wait, I think I belong here now.”
If you’d like to learn more about Seth, his work, and his new venture, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit his newly launched website at 7media.pro, where he offers media technology consulting, project support, and multilingual training services for broadcasters and content creators.