When Kerryn Colen and her family repatriated back to Australia from Canada after 11 years overseas during COVID, hotel quarantine was a silver lining. A silver lining that turned into a silver bullet to getting all the repatriation admin done in two short weeks.

Kids enrolled in school, check. Kids football club logistics, check. Great job, check.

What took longer, was feeling ‘normal’ which took nearly 12 months for the family of four.

In this podcast, Kerryn talks about how the family adjusted and the difference in feelings between parents, who were ‘coming home’ and the kids who were going to live in a place that to date, had just felt like the land of ‘beach holidays, Christmas with relatives and fun times’ - despite their Australian birth certificates.

Kerryn used preparation time and hotel quarantine to sort out the anchors for her family’s new life back in Australia. While for Kerryn this was a job and volunteering, for her kids it was sorting out school and a football club. For Kerryn and her partner, getting the family’s ‘non-work’ lives sorted as soon as possible was a key strategy to making the family, the kids in particular, reconnect with life back in Australia as quickly as possible.

Adam Ford describes his approach to the job market after coming home as ‘pretty proactive because I knew it was going to be pretty difficult’.

Adam was coming home to Australia with a North American finance career but what he really wanted was a role in the for-purpose sector. To achieve this, he knew he had to convince a parochial hiring market NOT to put him in the finance box.

Fast forward a few short years and Adam has successfully swapped boxes.

He now leads the International Association of Privacy Professionals in Australia and New Zealand.

In this podcast, we talk about how Adam has ‘relaunched’ himself a number of times in his career in both the US and in Australia to align with his changing interests and as part of a dual career family.

This is a great discussion for expats who want to come home and want to pivot their career.

Going from a small fish in a large pond, to a larger fish in a somewhat smaller pond sounds like a good idea, until you are that fish. Adam talks through his strategy of taking what could look like a sideways step on the surface, but really was the step that helped him rebuild and pivot to the professional and personal life that he loves right now.

Udo Doring’s ‘normal’ adult life is not ‘normal’ for most Australians, but ‘normal’ for a person who grew up as a third culture kid with parents raising children in Indonesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong and mainland China.

Which makes him a perfectly “normal” pick for CEO of the Advisory Board Centre, an organisation born in Brisbane but with a presence across the globe.

In this episode we cover Udo’s life as an expat-repat “lifer” and the growth of Advisory Boards and opportunities for globally experienced Aussies.

Advisory boards have doubled globally in the last two years which means opportunities are booming. Unlike corporate boards which are responsible for governance and decision making, advisory boards are used for “problem solving” and it's not just corporates using them. Today government departments and universities are increasingly employing advisory boards. International and deep sector experience is often sought, and no longer are advisory boards just the domain of people in their 50s and 60s. Digital marketing, cyber security and AI are just some of the areas advisory boards are now leaning in to, providing new opportunities for younger professionals.

In this podcast, Udo and I talk about these opportunities, current sector trends and how interested expat-repats should approach getting involved. The decision by the Australian government to mandate that aged care operators have an advisory board is leading many to believe more industries will follow, creating many more opportunities for returning expats to leverage their expertise and keep their international experience alive.