Thomasena first moved to America with Brian in 1998 just after Christmas. The reason for the move was that Brian had just finished his PhD in Ireland at UCD and received a visa for a post doc opportunity at the University of Tennessee. In order to come over with Brian, who she was dating at the time, Thomasena got a three month visitor pass to figure out what she was going to do. She decided to contact the communications studies department at the University of Tennessee, because they had a public relations/advertising department, and she already had a master's in public relations and had always thought about getting a PhD someday.

Thomasena received her acceptance to the program shortly after, which meant they could definitely stay in Knoxville, Tennessee for the duration of both their studies. Their initial plan after this which would take around 3 years was to move somewhere else or back to Ireland.

After finishing her degree in 2002 Thomasena and Brian got married and had their first child, Sam O'Nuallain in 2003. By now she got a full time job at the University of Tennessee, so they decided to stay longer. In 2005 she gave birth to Robert O'Nuallain, and then had her daughter, Kate O'Nuallain, in 2007. Originally, they expected to stay 3 years but ended up staying ten.

"The main reason I came was the opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree, something I couldn't do in Ireland because there was no PhD program in public relations at that time."-Thomasena Shaw

In 2008 right before her oldest child Sam was about to start school in Knoxville, she decided that she wanted to move back to Ireland. She decided now was the time because she knew it would be much harder to move once the kids started school, so the whole family moved back to Ireland in 2008.

Three weeks after moving back to Ireland, the recession of 2008 started. Everywhere, including Europe, was effected heavily. Thomasena initially thought it would be easy to find a job as a teacher as she had two masters, a PhD and had been teaching at the University of Tennessee. However, due to the recession there was a freeze on all third level hiring and it was impossible for her to find a full time job. Her husband, Brian, on the other hand got a job at University College Dublin working in a lab on Alzheimer's research.

They carried on like this for three years, and then in 2011 a man Brian was working with had an opportunity to set up a lab in Boston and offered Brian to come with him. Due to the recession and the instability at the time, they decided to take this offer and move back to the States to Boston.

After moving back to America, this time to the Boston area, they had more of a long term plan of staying. Which was possible because in 2006 Thomasena and Brian applied for green cards through their work and were accepted.

When they first moved to Massachusetts, Thomasena and Brian rented a house in Newton. Brian worked in the Harvard Institute of Medicine, and Thomasena worked as a professor teaching Public relations and communications at Bridgewater State University. In 2012 they bought a house in Needham, Massachusetts.

Thomasena and Brian decided to apply for citizenship in 2021. From there she has continued her career in communications and plans to stay in Boston as she loves the city and is drawn to its European feel.

" I think Boston is the one of the most European like cities in America, a lot of America in our experience has been these kind of wide open spaces, strip malls lots of space and vastness. Whereas, Boston has the crooked twisty roads... it's a vibrant city, and that's very appealing to us because it kind of feels like home"- Thomasena Shaw