Boomeranging: Expat to Repat

S1 Ep5: Glen Falting

Some people collect snow domes from countries they visit, Glen and his wife collected children. Their stints as an expat couple in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore all symbolically marked with the birth of kids – and doubly celebrated in Hong Kong with the arrival of twins.

 

When they arrived in Brisbane after almost two decades abroad, they faced a dual challenge of dealing with the grief of the end of an overseas adventure and four children who struggled to name all of Australia’s states and territories.

 

Like many expat families, Glen wanted his kids to have the right balance of feeling like a global citizen at the same time as having a good sense of where they belonged. So after ten years in Singapore and another decade before this in Tokyo, Hong Kong and London, Glen and his wife made the difficult decision to return home.

 

This was a bit of a shock for the kids who had only ever really experienced Australia on holidays. Glen recounts the family attending the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast and seeing his kids barrack for Singapore.

 

For Glen and his wife, the transition was tough too. His wife lost her network and for Glen, he had to adjust to creating a career in Brisbane, after having a big role in a regional hub like Singapore.

 

But what started with a sense of grief, Glen now says is the best decision the Faltings have ever made. The kids are becoming little Aussies and Glen and his wife have started their own law firm – using their global contacts and experience to help overseas businesses in Australia.

 

S1 Ep4: Mandy Mirghashini

For Mandy, the decision to move to the Hague with her family was a case of taking an opportunity to walk in the shoes of the people she had spent her career advising.

 

As a HR professional in global mobility for Shell, there was no better way to understand the experience of the expat and then repat than to live it herself!

 

Mandy’s journey wasn’t a solo one – she left Melbourne for the Netherlands in 2008 with her husband and her 18 month old son.  She reflects that the expat journey was different for every family member. For her engineer husband, the early years were focused on looking after their young son whilst trying to study in a foreign language. When they moved to Poland, he pursued remote learning and has created a new career path.  For their son, he arrived in Australia on the cusp of high-school as a ‘third-culture’ kid with no experience of what it is like to grow up Australian.

 

In some respects, it was Mandy’s day-to-day world with Shell that was the most consistent. She talks about the expat experience for family members being ‘not static’. It changes all the time for those who have had to adjust around the family member with the job and it is important to ‘check-in’ regularly.

 

After a decade overseas, Mandy relocated back to Melbourne with Shell, only to find that the Australian head-office had moved to Perth! However, her experience of working as part of a global team where working remotely and across different time zones is the norm meant this wasn’t a hurdle and she was probably more prepared for COVID than most of us.

 

 

S1 Ep3: Jan McGrath

Jan told friends she was going to Hong Kong for a two-year adventure. 

 

Lucky no one held her mail, because she returned 18 years later via a life and career detour to the UK and the US.

 

The initial lure overseas was the chance to launch HSBC’s world first chip-based technology for payments cards.  Completing a unique project such as this meant that when she was finished, she was in hot demand and after Hong Kong moved to London and from there, to the US working with MasterCard.

 

Along the way she met her American husband Larry and spent years in Arizona as step-mum to two American teens.

 

After more than 15 years, her employer asked Jan “Where to next?” and to her own surprise, she said “home”.  While it took 12 months to plan a role back home, it took Larry 60 seconds to grab shorts and thongs and say, “I’m in!”

 

While she returned home with a role, her professional life was challenging.  A lack of a local network nor an understanding from the market of what she had done in her career created a sense of disconnection.  When she went out to find a new role – her 20-year international career in financial services was overlooked by the major banks. It was a difficult time.

 

But while the traditional banks weren’t interested – Australia’s fintech sector certainly was.  Jan is now working at Novatti, an innovative high growth payment services company and is an active mentor to founders and investors through work with Stone and Chalk.

 

Her move from Sydney to Melbourne during COVID ironically has been her least dramatic.  She is finally using her international skills to their greatest potential.  Larry is still wearing shorts.

 

S1 Ep2: Jane Hollman

Jane had a coveted job as the Head of HR for the AFL when she decided to pack it all in to go to New York with nothing but a suitcase, a three-month tourist visa and a pair of itchy feet.

 

Arriving during the GFC, her skills in HR and leadership were in hot demand, but for all the wrong reasons.  One of her first career defining roles was helping American Express downsize their finance department by over 1,000 jobs.

 

It was a bleak but challenging start to a five-year stint in New York, a city she always loved and still calls her second home.  Long brunches, a love of film festivals and devotion to the NFL, all positive by-products.

 

While in New York she held a number of senior HR positions with different financial services companies.  She describes her time in New York as career defining, yet when she got home local recruiters considered her having been ‘out of the market for the last five years’ and showed an open hostility towards her international experience that still shocks her today.

 

She spent twelve months looking for a role back home. That’s a lot of coffees.

 

Combined with facing challenges in the job market, Jane felt restless – Australia wasn’t the country she had left.  And she wasn’t the same either.

 

But after 12 months, she started to find her groove using her resilience and change skills to undertake a number of contracts and advisory jobs.  She now actively seeks out expats when she is advising businesses that are start-ups or growing – both for their resilience skills and their networks.

 

She no longer feels the restless itch to return to New York. Well, almost.  As long as the NFL isn’t on.

 

S1 Ep1: Bryce Corbett

Bryce was at the end of a two-year working visa in the UK working for SkyNews when he decided he wasn’t quite ready to come home.  He was working for the entertainment desk and one day when habitually swapping his copy of “Heat” magazine for the finance desk’s copy of the “Economist” he stumbled on a job ad for a role that “no one ever gets”.  He applied anyway, took a sick day and a Eurostar to Paris and the next ten years, as they say, are history. 

 

Over the next decade, on top of working for the International Chamber of Commerce as the Director of Communications, he met his wife, a professional dancer with the Moulin Rouge. Originally from Brisbane, his wife had already been in Paris for many years and like Bryce, initially thought she would end up with someone a ‘bit more exotic’ rather than a fellow Aussie but love in the City of Lights had other ideas.

 

Together they built a life in Paris, also writing books about their experiences, before returning home ten years later with two children (with French passports) in tow.

 

Arriving back into Sydney, Bryce recounts enormous culture shock, somewhat brought on by trying to adjust to the light and heat of an Australian summer after 12 European winters.  He talks about the first few months of uncertainty, the feeling of ‘what have we done?’ and how quickly the rose-coloured glasses for Paris were put on.

 

He was fortunate to have secured a job as Executive Editor of the Woman’s Weekly before returning home - but it wasn’t easy. He describes during the job search, many conversations with people who seemed to ignore or discount his 12 years abroad, preferring to talk about the last job he had in Australia.  He said it was like his career and life overseas had been ‘paused’ in the minds of many people.

 

Fortunately, Bryce’s time in Paris had taught him the power of reinvention and resilience.

 

After the Women’s Weekly, Bryce continued his journalism career with stints at the AFR and 60 Minutes and now is a strategic communications adviser for Domestique Consulting co-author of Unmasked Turia Pitt and A Mother’s Story by Rosie Batty plus the host and creator of Squiz Kids.

 

He and his family now live in Brisbane where they have settled and got used to the light.