War in Ukraine forced lawyer to change career in Florida

On a quiet afternoon at her nail salon in Seminole, Liudmyla Nikohosian gently held a client’s hand while applying a layer of gel to make her nails strong and shiny.

- Juan Carlos Chavez, Tribune News Service

A flower arrangement sat in the corner. A flat-screen TV streamed videos of European cities as soft music played in the background. When clients asked for water or an espresso, Nikohosian brought it with a Ferrero Rocher chocolate wrapped in gold foil. It’s a calm and carefully designed space, the centr of the new life she’s built in Florida and a world away from the one she left in Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine. Three years ago, Nikohosian was working as a private lawyer for a construction firm. But after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, she fled her home, leaving behind her career and everything familiar. She came to the United States through a humanitar-ian parole programme and settled in Tampa, where she learned English and began training as a nail technician. She opened her own business, Nails by Mila, a reinvention she never imagined but now owns.