Sostrin Client Spotlight - Peter Verhoeven

 

Sostrin client Peter Verhoeven’s parents gifted him a small AM radio when he was growing up as an only child in Belgium.

“It was the size of an iPhone today,” he remembers.  The radio helped him discover a magical new world of people and sounds from hundreds of miles away.

“I must have been around six or seven years old at the time,” he continues, “and I would always take the little radio under the sheets with me before going to sleep and I would listen to it for hours.”

A few years later, he and his best friend began recording their own radio shows on cassette tapes.  “We told jokes, read our schoolbook reports as content, faked call-ins from so-called ‘listeners’ and played mostly old vinyl 45 rpm singles from Elvis Presley – that’s what my friend’s dad was into. We had only one microphone and used his older sister’s Hi-Fi tower to record the cassettes, despite her explicitly forbidding us to touch it. That’s how it all started.”

Mr. Verhoeven’s experience with the radio was formative, and he turned it from a childhood hobby into a career, beginning his national broadcast career in radio in 1995.

Three years later, his life would change again when he visited Los Angeles for the first time.

“After being here for one day,” he says, “it felt like coming home.”

Mr. Verhoeven knew he wanted to move to Los Angeles but, discouraged by friends and family who worried about such a drastic change, he waited 16 years before he made the move.

“In 2014 I finally had enough courage to trust my gut, and with the great successful help of Sostrin Immigration, I took the leap of faith across the Atlantic from Europe to the United States,” he says. “Now, in my ninth year living in Los Angeles, it still feels like it was the best decision of my life."

Mr. Verhoeven continues to work as a radio host, broadcasting his daily show live from Los Angeles to audiences in Europe and worldwide. Of course, with nearly 30 years of experience, much has changed in the industry since he began.  The arrival of social media and cameras in the radio studio has changed his work to be more than just introducing new music to listeners.

“It’s kind of like going from black and white TV to a 4K movie in 3D. It’s just a very different way of communicating and experiencing the medium,” Mr. Verhoeven explains. “But the base of the message stays the same: trying to be a friend for your listeners. In whatever form that is. That’s the most important rule for me.”

Sostrin Immigration Lawyers is proud to have assisted Mr. Verhoeven with several O-1 visas throughout the years and wish him continued success