Boomeranging: Expat to Repat

S5 Ep6: James Bingham

When James Bingham the IT Project Manager left for London in 2014, little did he know that he would come back to Australia almost 8 years later with a new career in an industry that to this day, you can’t do a degree or course in.

 

Yet in a post COVID world, is now one of the most talked about subjects.

 

Workplace strategy.

 

James was working with NBCUniversal in London when he was offered the chance to relocate to New York and keep his overseas adventure alive. In New York, he helped NBCUniversal set up their offices all over the US and Canada.  This led him to WeWork, which at the time was leading the world in re-inventing co-working communities and spaces.

 

Here, James was allowed to dream and create a new future of work - at a time when the world need to pivot its thinking about work with the offset of the pandemic.  It was also here where he met some kindred spirits and the idea of Alidade, a real estate and workplace strategy advisory company was born. 

 

James came home mid-pandemic and has spent the last three years leading Alidade’s presence in Australia and the Asia Pacific. We talk about the challenge of bringing his overseas experience home and the challenge of adapting big market strategies it to a smaller market like Australia - that approaches innovation in a much different way to the Americans!  He offers some great advice for Aussies coming home and wanting to start a business in an industry that may have been going at a different speed and scale to Australia.

S5 Ep5: Mark Lindley

Mark Lindley left Australia for a life overseas with no job and returned 12 years later in the same situation. 

 

But in both scenarios – he had a grand plan underpinned by dreams to choose where he wanted to live and let the career follow. 

 

And it worked out for Mark – both in Dubai and today in the Gold Coast.

 

In this podcast, I talk to Mark about how he and his wife chose Dubai for their overseas adventure and the next chapter in their already established careers.

 

And he tells me how after 12 years in senior HR roles which saw him responsible for thousands of staff across the world, he woke up one day and just realised ‘it was time’.

 

Rather than come back to his old home in Sydney, Mark and his wife decided on Gold Coast, a city neither had ever lived in. They were determined to keep their adventure going – and that adventure continued to involve sand!  He was also determined to not let a job dictate where he ultimately lived so the Gold Coast decision came way before a job decision was made.

 

I talk to Mark about how he planned his return navigating his global experience and roles into a career he could manage from the Gold Coast, largely remotely and often in his shorts.

 

And he explains why after a career of permanent jobs, he has become is a big fan of the contract.  His advice, just make sure it goes for a year.

 

S5 Ep4: Damien Otto

How does an Adelaidean who considers himself not a ‘big city person’ with no real aspiration to live overseas, end up loving life in Ho Chi Minh City?

 

The is Damien Otto’s story after a generous leader at Commonwealth Bank connected him with career opportunities overseas which eventually saw the Otto family pack their bags for a life in Vietnam.

 

It seemed like the perfectly secure career move.  A secondment on a fixed term with his long-term employer who had to date, always looked out for him.  

 

Until it wasn’t.

 

At the end of his time in Vietnam, Damian was surprised to be offered a redundancy or the opportunity to find another job on his own at the bank somewhere in Australia.  Not the response he was expecting or the way he thought his career with the bank would continue to grow.

 

In this podcast, we discuss how Damien responded and the learnings he would share with other expats who find themselves in a similar situation.

 

It has been four years now and Damien is now living in Melbourne for an organisation that sought him out for the skills he gained in Vietnam.  His Vietnamese experience, while it didn’t end quite like he imagined, still looms large in his daily life. He might not be riding a scooter with his partner and two kids down the road for the weekly shop, but Damien still eats a banh mi every week and says the skills he gained in Vietnam have shaped him into the leader he is today.

S5 Ep3: Jacinta Reddan

If you are a future repat thinking life back in Australia might be too slow, then you might fall off your chair during this podcast when you hear that Jacinta Reddan, the former CEO of AusCham in Hong Kong thinks her professional life is just as fast-paced in Cairns!

Which is good for Jacinta, who admits her biggest fear of moving to tropical north Queensland and a city she had never lived in before, would be that she would be bored.

Jacinta first left Melbourne in her early 20s for an 18-month stint in Hong Kong that turned out to be a decade long stay.  Even when she returned to Melbourne to live, Hong Kong wasn’t quite out of her system and six years later after returning to Australia, she and her two young daughters headed back. 

Maintaining professional contacts and friends has been the thread that runs through the amazing career opportunities Jacinta has had both in Australia and in Hong Kong.  In fact, it was a friend and colleague from her early days as a freshly minted journalist at the Warrnambool Standard that led her to her role at Advance Cairns and an exciting new life in Tropical North Queensland after over 20 years in Hong Kong.

We talk in the podcast about how she has approached maintaining her connections with Australia, what learnings she gained from coming home the first time, how her two third-culture kids are coping with a home country that feels foreign and about her approach to life in Cairns. Her next ‘expat assignment’.

Sneak preview: she is far from bored.

S5 Ep2: Brett Cooper

After 21 years with the one employer and a life across multiple countries in Europe and Asia, it is somewhat ironic that Brett Cooper has now ended up in one country with multiple employers.

Such is the adventure of an expat-repat!

Brett’s career with Phillip Morris started in Sydney and took him to Switzerland, the UK, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. He hadn’t been on a plane until he was 18 but certainly made up for it after seeing his colleagues take the leap and making the international move himself.

Taking career chances and moving countries allowed Brett to build skills across corporate affairs, human resources, and general management.

Despite having a breadth of skills, Brett was still concerned about coming home and started planning well in advance.  Turns out, this wasn’t enough time.

In this podcast, we talk about how Brett navigated the recruiter scene back in Australia and why he decided in the end to pursue a portfolio career.  We discuss how this style of career has been the best one to not only leverage his skills but to give him the lifestyle flexibility that he needs to manage his kid’s transition back to Australia – and to ensure they lose their American accents!

S5 Ep1: Andrew Tiernan

It took three attempts and a career 180 for Andrew Tiernan to move home to Australia after 18 years overseas but despite the bumpy role to get to Melbourne he says he is now ‘in the right place’.

 

He has gone from a career working in financial services across Asia and Canada to the CEO of his own tech platform start-up signing its first clients.  His partner has found his career sweet spot and together they are carving out a great life in Melbourne, despite neither living there before. 

 

They believe ‘the adventure doesn’t have to stop’, proving you can take expats out of the adventure, but you can’t never take the sense of adventure out of the expat.

 

Andrew speaks about a couple of key factors behind his eventual success; a shifting mindset about his career, making sure his partner was equally invested in the move and asking for help from his friends and network.

 

We talk a lot about the role his network, past and new, has played in not only helping Andrew with career decisions but on supporting his business. 

 

This episode is a great reminder of the power of networks and the opportunity that can unfold if you just ask for help.