Boomeranging: Expat to Repat

S3 Ep3: Scott Cooper

New York, New York…If you can make it here, they say you can make it anywhere. And Scott Cooper is living proof.  Scott initially went to New York following his partner and her career. He didn’t have a job or people he knew and to make his situation even more challenging, this expat thought his new life was the right time to ditch his day job in civil engineering and move into digital marketing.

 

But there was one thing Scott knew how to do well, a skill that is universal the world over – Scott knew how to hustle. Over his first nine months in the city that never sleeps, he met friends of friends, contacts of contacts and was at Meet-Up groups three or four nights a week. Soon Scott was representing an off-Broadway play, a guitarist and a number of small tech companies. Scott says that in the US, people are more likely to give you a go at something new if they can see you are ambitious and passionate while in Australia, people struggled to give him a go because they couldn’t see beyond his civil engineering background.  In less than a year, Scott was offered his first US permanent role working for Waywire Networks, a video curation platform where he quickly worked up to the role of editor.  His career in helping grow companies had started.

 

After New York, Scott established himself with an Australian tech start up in San Francisco, and after San Francisco after nearly five years in the US, he returned to Melbourne and continued to work for businesses in their hyper-growth phase.

Now, after a career of starting again and helping companies begin and grow their own journeys, he is the COO at Versus Merch - just one of what is quickly shaping up to be a growing suite of businesses that he co-owns and runs.  Scott is still hustling but this time the confidence of a man who made it in New York.

S3 Ep2: Trena Blair

Trena Blair will be the first to admit, she didn’t want to come home from New York.  In her two and half years in the city that never sleeps, she had met all three of her New York goals – to volunteer at the Met, to study at NYU and to secure a role. And she was happy. Very happy. But a career opportunity back home in Sydney for her husband, meant their New York dream had to come to an end. 

 

Well, at least for him. 

 

For Trena, coming home with a job and a NY-based boss, meant she was able to jet back to her home away from home every three months.  However, after three years in this role, it was time for a new challenge, and this meant leaving the company and her regular work trips to New York.

 

Despite this, New York never strayed too far from her consciousness.

 

Trena took three months off to contemplate her next move and to complete the Australian Institute of Company Directors course.  At the course graduation event, she had a 30 second conversation with the person sitting beside her who had asked her ‘so, what’s your pitch?’  She said, ‘payments, travel and lived and worked in New York.’ The stranger told her to call him the next day and so began the start of her next career chapter.

 

Trena is the founder and CEO of FD Global Connections, specialists in US market entry strategies for Australian companies. Using her experience of the US market, particularly New York, she has created a niche service for Australian businesses and a new legitimate excuse to regularly travel to her favourite city outside of Australia.

S3 Ep1: Chris Edwards

People often do extreme things to avoid Sydney house prices but none more extreme than Chris Edwards and her husband.  Fifteen years ago when staring down an exorbitant quote to renovate their tiny, inner city cottage – they decided to take an easier option.  Move to Singapore. On their own coin and for Chris, without a job. 

After a start in publishing, Chris went out on her own and established Honeycombers – a lifestyle guide to all things Singapore that has now grown into a group of publishing and digital services businesses. 

Four years ago, after 11 years in Singapore, Chris and her family moved back from the little red dot to set up life in Byron Bay.

Chris spent three years planning the move back home so that her businesses could manage itself locally – this involved working with her team to make sure there was a skilled and trusted management team and structure in place in Singapore. This worked pretty well – until just before COVID when her General Manager resigned and Chris found herself managing her Asian businesses in the midst of a pandemic from her home office in Byron.

She weathered the lows, which included seeing revenues fall off a cliff, and experienced the highs of seeing her team at their creative best.  In true expat spirit, her resilience has paid off and she has some key learnings to share about what is and isn’t possible for managing international businesses remotely.

 

S2 Ep9: Season Wrap - The Covid Series

A special episode dedicated to all the COVID expat-repats – those Aussies who came home in the pandemic either as a direct result, a planned moved or in some cases just because they were passing through Australia when it all hit.

 

Podcast producers Margot Andersen and Simone Pregellio share the expat stories from both the podcast and six months of conversations with Australians who have been part of the 600,000 contingent who have come home during COVID.

 

On top of the normal repatriation challenges, these COVID repats have had some unique challenges.  Navigating closed borders, coming home in the midst of lockdowns and trying to re-establish networks over Zoom.

 

All while big changes are happening in the job market and stories surface of an impending skills shortage.

 

In this episode Margot outlines the challenges and the opportunities she is discussing with expats today and how expats sitting overseas can prepare for their move back during these uncertain conditions.

S2 Ep8: Prue Clarke

It was the Aussie sense of adventure that took journalist Prue Clarke to New York in 2000, it was the American dream that kept her there for 19 years. 

 

Like most expats, Prue’s story started with a plan to be away for ‘just a year’.  But when her ‘just a year’ included studying at the prestigious Columbia University, reporting on September 11 and meeting her very own Mr Big, plans change.

 

After two years in New York, and reflecting on her experience with September 11, Prue decided she wanted to report more on the world’s ‘why’ than its ‘what’.  She took a six-month job in Ghana in Africa which started a six-year tenure reporting for US and global publications from the developing world and sowed the seeds for her non-profit organisation New Narratives that she still leads today. New Narratives supports news media in low- income countries of Africa and the Pacific to empower them to tell their own stories.

 

New Narratives and journalism in Africa have remained constant in Prue’s life which has taken her from New York to London, back to New York and then home to Sydney in 2019, with an American husband and two internationally-born children in tow.

 

Managing such a life Prue attributes to ‘America’s dream big’ mentality and the influence of a city like New York where everything feels possible.

 

She is now living in a world now that feels very restricted and, in this podcast, ponders the opportunities and risks for Australians like herself trying to maintain global organisations and connections.  After spending nearly two decades reporting on both Australian and global stories, Prue also reflects on the impact the departure of hundreds of thousands of Aussie expats from overseas roles back home will have on ‘brand Australia’ internationally.

S2 Ep7: Andrew Whitford

Kissed on the backside by a fairy, is how expat Andy Whitford has described his luck being relocated back to Australia with an Asia Pacific role during COVID.

 

After 15 years in Shanghai and Hong Kong and a previous expat life of six years in London, Andy was aware of how hard it could be to return home without a job.

 

In recent years, this former CEO and Director of multiple Australian Chambers of Commerce in Asia had tried but failed to pursue board positions with Australian companies because he wasn’t ‘local’ to Sydney or Melbourne.  In one head-hunter’s words, ‘a board director wants to be able to have a drink at the club with you’. Leadership, Asian experience (and Zoom it seems) was not enough.

 

Fortunately, in 2019, Andy was approached by an organisation that thought differently which is why in Hong Kong he was able to transition from leading a bank to leading a successful UK based research, intelligence and campaigns consultancy. From the outset, this organisation had sought his Asian know-how, his deep networks and his start-up experience.  His campaign knowledge – was taught on the job.

 

Andy acknowledges how lucky he was to come home with a great role and to be able to then live in his home-town of Melbourne surrounded by family.  He reflects on what has and has not changed for expats returning home over the last two decades. With record numbers of Australian talent coming home over the last year, we ask him what he thinks needs to change to better help professional expats when they return and for Australia to maximise the brain gain opportunity.