The Time Is Now

Elpida grew up in Germany, originally from Greece, lived in France, Switzerland, Singapore, and Belgium. Today she lives in Japan. She shares with you her journey with her family and how she went from working in Media to finding her passion for coaching.

The post TN39: Elpida Tsovili, expat partner in Tokyo. appeared first on Tandem Nomads.

Divorce within an expat couple can lead to very complex legal situations. Worst case situations can lead to children abduction lawsuits.

Lucy Greenwood, lawyer & partner at International Family Law Group shares in this episode advice to prevent or manage these situations.

Lucy Greenwood handles cases concerning all aspects of family breakdown. She ensures that her clients are protected as much as possible from tough litigations. When possible, she tries to find a conciliatory approach. But much of her work in forum cases require immediate and urgent action to protect a client’s position. Lucy writes for websites, legal journals and she has presented a number of seminar and webinar updates for the legal profession, as well as given lectures across the world.

In this episode, Lucy gives us information and tips on many topics related to family breakdown and divorce. Here is a little glimpse on what we discussed:

 Find Lucy Greenwood:

Andrea Martins comes from Australia. She gave up her head-office government career to follow her husband abroad and lived for nearly 10 years moving from Indonesia, Mexico and Malaysia. Today she is back to Australia.

While relocating with her husband she started her fascinating serial entrepreneurial journey. Andrea is the co-founder of the famous online platform called expatwomen.com (click to check this interesting article!). Her website had such a great success that she managed to sell it with a 6-figure deal.

After this great achievement with the plateform Expat Women, who would have thought that Andrea would have issues finding a job once back home? This situation has led her to create another company called Story Résumés, an online service designed to help job seekers get noticed with infographics and illustrated résumés.

Andrea became through the years what she calls a StartUp addict and co-founded a third company called GreenSocks, which is like an Uber service for lawn mowing.

Glimpse on some of Andrea's insights:

We can say that Jo Parfitt is an expert in building a portable career and portable businesses. While moving with her husband and kids from France, Dubai, Oman, Norway, the Netherlands and now Malaysia, she has become what I call a serial nomadpreneur. Jo is a journalist, editor, writer, speaker and teacher who has launched multiple business ventures that include the publishing company called Summertime Publishing, she also founded the Expat book shop, an online bookstore for expats. Jo has written over 30 books herself, and one her master peace is all about portable careers, the book is called “A career in your suitcase”.

Jo is also an active member of the FIGT (Families in Global Transitions) and previously managed the Parfitt Pascoe Writing Residency and mentored the beneficiaries of this scholarship.

Following this interview, I had the immense pleasure to meet Jo at the FIGT conference in Amsterdam. If you are interested in expatriation topics I highly recommend you to check out the FIGT website and join us at the next conference!

 Glimpse on Jo's insights in this episode:

Get Jo Parfitt and Colleen Reichrath-Smith's book, "A career in your suitcase" on Amazon. And, as mentioned by Jo in this episode, if you want to join the Career in your Suitcase network of trainers, contact Colleen here.

Find Jo Parfitt:

Helene Reiter and Manfred Girkinger are both Austrians, today they live in Shanghai.

Since I started Tandem Nomads, I always wished I could interview both members of expat couples to have the different perspectives represented. But I have to say that for many reasons it is not the easiest thing to organize. I will keep trying as much as I can!

 Helene and Manfred’s case is quite a particular one, as they have been alternatively the following partner. I’ve heard a lot of expat couples saying that this was originally their plan to alternatively follow each other but it often doesn’t work out; it often ends up to be always the same one who follows. I was wondering what made it work for this couple. As Manfred mentioned, the fact that they do not have children might have made a huge difference and gave them some freedom. However, when listening to their story, I do realize that there are also many other major factors that made it possible for them, and they both share them with you in this episode.

Manfred was living in South Africa, running a furniture design business, when Helene quit her job and joined him there. After few years, as she explains, Helene felt the need to go back to Austria, so this time it is Manfred who quit his business in South Africa to join her in Austria. After few years, they both started having itchy feet and Manfred had an offer he couldn’t refuse. He was sent to Shanghai as the sales director of a leading company in the aerospace industry. After only a couple of years he became the CEO of this company. In the meantime, Helene had joined him for the second time and managed to build a successful professional path in HR. In just a couple of years, she also managed to become the HR director of the American School in Shanghai. Few months ago, Manfred quit his job, he wanted to go back to study and enrolled an MBA program in Aviation Management. Today, Helene continues to manage the HR department of the American School in Shanghai while Manfred travels between Austria and Shanghai for his MBA program.

Glimpse on Helene and Manfred’s insights in this episode:

 Find Helen and Manfred:

In the episode 10, “to work or not to work...”, I promised to bring you some practical insights to answer this sometimes uncomfortable question for expat partners: “what do you do?”

Stephanie Ward is American and lives in the Netherlands where she emigrated for love, she is a Business and Marketing Mentor and passionate about igniting small businesses success.

She shares with you some great applicable tips to answer the question "what do you do?" in a comprehensive and memorable way that fits to your personal or professional situation.

We will discuss for instance, how to answer the question if:

Find Stephanie Ward:

Additionally to this episode, you can find more insights from Stephanie on this topic via this great blog post: The right way to say what is it that you do.

Lisa Webb grew up in Canada. After university she became a teacher for 8 years, then the assistant principal of an elementary school. Her husband, who is also Canadian was one day offered a job in Paris.  So they packed up their lives in Canada and moved to France. After a year in Paris, they were moved to the South of France, where they lived for 4 years and had two French-born children. During that time Lisa began writing, and created the blog Canadian Expat Mom, where she shares her experiences on expat life and travel.

This past year she and her family moved from France to Indonesia. While Lisa and her family have been adjusting to this new culture, she also published the first book in her first children's book series, 'The Kids Who Travel the World' that quickly landed on Amazon's Bestseller list for children's book. She is now working on publishing 'Once Upon An Expat' a series of stories from expats around the world.

I am very honored that Lisa invited me to share my story on her coming book, “Once Upon An Expat”. All royalties will be donated to a charity promoting literacy and education: http://www.booksabroad.org.uk

So stay tuned for the book's official launch

Lisa’s insights in this episode:

Lisa’s books:

Lisa’s online recommendations:

Find Lisa Webb:

Rashmi Aggarwala Zimburg grew up in India and studied in the US.Today she lives in Japan with her husband and two daughters. P

reviously they also lived in Algeria, Indonesia and Austria. Before going into this global nomadic journey, Rashmi graduated from an MBA, built a career in business management and worked for 15 years in different industries such as Finance, Transportation, and Mobile communications. In addition, she completed Cross Cultural & Management training programs for senior executives. She also extensively studied one for her passions: food and Ayurveda! She even tought Indian Cooking Classes at The New School Culinary Institute, in New York.

Since she joined her husband in his different postings, and while managing the responsibilities of a diplomatic spouse, Rashmi continued to invest in her personal and professional growth. She continued practicing Ayurveda cooking but she also became a coach. Today, she helps her clients transform their lives and reach their goals.

 Glimpse on Rashmi's insights in this episode:

Rashmi's book recommendations:

Find Rashmi Aggarwala Zimburg:

It is already quite complicated to manage our households’ finances in general, but it does tend to get even more complicated when we move from a country to another. I also noticed that in a lot of cases, even when expat partners are financially dependent, they are very involved in managing the finances of their household, which I believe it is very important to do.

To discuss the topic, I brought you an expert in households financial planning, Hui-Chin Chen.

Hui-Chin Chen has lived in constant transitions for the last twelve years. She is a native of Taiwan, she has moved to the US, India, Mexico and New Zealand for her career and her husband’s career. She is now the co-owner of Pavlov Financial Planning in Virginia, where she works virtually with globally mobile American families. She helps them organize their finances around the life they want to live. She also writes a blog about personal finance topics at Money Matters for Globetrotters, drawing from her experience as a financial planner and working locally in five countries in the past ten years.

Find Hui-Chin Chen:

Web: Money Matters for Globe Trotters

Email: [email protected]