Kathryn Eade is an expert in mindset and resilience, and helps to inspire a different way of thinking.  She is the founder of Up+thrive and is motivated by seeing people thrive out of their comfort zone, and knowing that she played a part in their journey to success. Kathryn supports female entrepreneurs and aspiring leaders with the mindset (self belief, courage and resilience) to embrace change and thrive. 

Kathryn, when did your business journey start?

My business journey started in 2003, when I left my job in the International NGO sector and set up my own learning consultancy - thinkingpeople. In my job I supported expats to prepare for the change of working overseas and how to work as part of a diverse team alongside local staff in some of the poorest communities in the world. I loved that job, but the travel left me a little jaded– so I looked for ways that I could apply skills in supporting people through transition and insights in how to build an effective global team in organisations closer to home. I was lucky enough to work with clients including the Premier League, the NHS, MTV and many UK universities.

At Up+thrive you empower  women  entrepreneurs and aspiring leaders with the mindset and resilience to  embrace change  and  thrive’ – what in your experience is the biggest threat we feel as women expats to change and how can we be overcomers?

I think the biggest obstacles to women expats to taking the leap and doing something different isn’t their lack of vision or desire to change, but it’s having the self belief that they can do it. Women expats are highly resilient. They have so many strategies to deal with change and uncertainty that they’ve used to support themselves and others to transition and settle on to a new country, but often they don’t recognize them, or give themselves credit for what they’ve achieved. We need to find ways to be kinder to ourselves, reduce the inner critic that gives us a hard time and holds us back, to support and celebrate each other (collaboration, not competition). By doing that we also inspire other women to do the same. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

What has been the biggest change in your life and how did you cope with it?  Any special tips?

There’s been a number of big changes in my life, as there often is with women of a certain age 😉 – getting married, taking the leap to run my run my first business, having children, but my most recent influential change was in 2015 when I moved with my family to Montreal, Canada. It was something I’d aspired to do for a long time – a family overseas experience,  - I wanted my children to experience something beyond where they had been born and grown up. However, even though I was an aspiring expat it was still a challenge. In particular was the challenge to my sense of identity – previously I was a mum of two and a small business owner (which I closed when I moved to Montreal), now I was defined partly by my children, but mainly by my husbands job. I knew quite early on that wasn’t going to work for me – and set on a journey to find my new sense of purpose. I went from being an expat partner to creating a global career using experience of cultural transition and entrepreneurship to support expat partners to redefine and reinvent their success. 

In terms of tips – my big one would be work out whats important to you and discuss and share that with your partner so that you both buy in to it from the outset. Knowing your purpose and creating a vision based on that is what will keep you going when you hit obstacles down the road. Want more tips – there a blog on my site 

http://bit.ly/MIHKathryn

My main inspiration for

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