Twenty years ago, I left the U.S. for a job in Milan. Excited about the opportunity to work abroad, I jumped at the chance. I’ve lived in Milan ever since. Read more about my story and the lessons I learned on CNBC Make It.
The el Camino de Santiago consists of multiple Christian pilgrimage routes leading to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where St. James the Greater, charged with spreading Christianity to the end of the world, is believed to be buried. I have wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago for some time now and finally decided to do it. I am not an expert on the Camino as I have just completed a part of the French route, but here is what I learned from my first experience.
While I’m in the early phases of the healing process, I wanted to share my learnings from surviving the loss of a loved one while abroad. This experience can be one of the most stressful events you will ever face. To heal, you must be open to receiving support from friends, family, and trained professionals. You will also need to take care of administrative and legal business, accept the changes in your circumstances, and eventually help someone else.
Step by step, you can remake your home anywhere with the right amount of patience, flexibility, perseverance, and openness to new experiences. Even if it is a temporary move, living and working abroad can open doors to new experiences that you never imagined before. Don’t let the fear of starting over stop you.
While the pandemic tested us in many ways and changed how we approach our professional and personal lives; it is easy to understand why young professionals might feel that expat life is out of reach. Yet, the opposite is true. Research shows that companies still see the importance of expat assignments with the number of all types of international assignments increasing in the future. Furthermore, professionals who are currently abroad are confident that life as they know it will return. If working abroad is something you want to experience, don’t give up on it.
Travel can be a life-changing experience. An experience that many of us are longing to have. As we ease back into travel, remember to do your homework. By doing a little bit of preparation, you can ensure that you will not only enjoy your travel experience but you will also avoid the dreaded label, the “ugly” tourist. In this blog post, I share some useful tips to help you prepare for your next travel experience.
As an expat, day-to-day life isn’t always “la dolce vita.” You’ll often be challenged while you are working abroad. Depending on where you go, you might face a confusing and lengthy immigration process, run into lots of bureaucracy, encounter difficulties when meeting new people, lose touch with family and friends, find that you are no longer a candidate for a work promotion back home, or be overwhelmed by basic obligations such as filing your taxes. In this blog post, I share some of the challenges I have faced while living and working in Italy.
Getting corporate work abroad as an expat can be a challenging goal, especially if you don’t know where to start. In this blog post, I’ve outlined the five steps that helped me get an expat job in Italy.
Expat experiences are critical to career growth. Yet, females make up only 20% of international experiences. With this year’s International Women’s Day theme #ChooseToChallenge, let’s challenge HR and ourselves to develop and demand expat programs that are more inclusive. As a female working abroad, I have five recommendations on how to be more inclusive.
If you have been dreaming about working abroad, now is the time to act. Read this step-by-step guide that will help you make your expat goals a reality.
Expat jobs in the time of COVID-19 and beyond require extra due diligence.