Español Charis Barks is the creator and webmaster of BoliviaBella.com and GoSouthExpat.com, two websites dedicated to making the transition to overseas living easier for expatriates, in addition to providing country facts and information on tourist attractions. As an extension of BoliviaBella.com she also established a relocation and destination services company called Expat Services, to assist expatriates relocating to Bolivia.

Charis' university studies focused on journalism and creative writing, political science, international relations, Spanish, Portuguese, and geology, all of which she puts to active use as a photographer and writer of travel articles, writer and designer of her websites, and as the owner of VPO Bilingual Services, a company that has provided document translation and simultaneous conference interpretation services in Bolivia, since 1998. As an interpreter, Charis has specialized in the oil and gas industries (drilling, geology and geophysics, environmental liabilities, and petroleum economics), education aid, health aid, gender and rights-based aid, human trafficking and slave labor, international trade, bio-trade, and environmental conservation.

A U.S. citizen, Charis was born in Minnesota, but has spent the majority of her life living and traveling overseas. Most of her childhood was spent relocating continuously between Ecuador, the U.S. and Bolivia. In her adult and professional life, she has also lived and worked in Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, California, Minnesota, Norway and Mexico, and has traveled to Germany, Holland, Belgium, Panama, Brazil and Peru.

She supports or is an active member of various environmental causes (Earth Hour, Earth Day Network, Green Hearts, UN International Year of Forests, and Santa Cruz Crece Verde).

Charis is an incurable chocoholic who also owns a bakery and is the owner/designer of the Charisma jewelry brand. She is also an avid photographer, writes travel articles for several websites other than her own, will travel at the drop of a suitcase, is a crazy rollerblader, and has won a number of national publisher awards in the U.S. for her poetry.