Tandem Nomads - From Expat Partners To Global Entrepreneurs! Build A Successful Business And Thrive In Your Global Nomadic

I am truly humbled and filled with joy by all the messages I’ve received from listeners and past guests of Tandem Nomads. Thank you for sharing your insights and incredible support! Tandem Nomads wouldn’t exist without you. Also, Tandem Nomads wouldn’t exist without all of you who are downloading on a daily basis Tandem Nomads podcast episodes and listening to these stories and tips from inspiring expat partners around the world. Thank you! The 50th episode marks the end of the 1st season. The 2nd season of Tandem Nomads podcast episodes will start in September. However, you will still be able to listen to short episodes during the summer. Previous episodes will be revisited, with some "best offs", and organized by theme for each week. So stay tuned during the summer to enjoy the little nuggets that you might have missed I can’t wait to continue this journey with you and continue to share ressources and inspiration to help you turn challenges into great opportunities and build you

Our guest today is Bérengère Ferrier, she is an expert in marketing communications and will share with us some great tips on how to establish a business and find your first clients when you just arrive in a new country. For over 6 years, Bérengère worked in the city of Lyon for a leading French advertising agency, Saatchi and Saatchi, and successfully managed advertising campaigns for major global brands. When her boyfriend, who later became her husband, was offered to move to California for a great job opportunity, despite the successful career path Bérengère was having, she didn’t hesitate to quit her job and join her boyfriend in this adventure. When they arrived to LA in 2013, she started doing some freelancing and her pool of clients has rapidly grown. Today, she has her own agency in strategy and marketing advising, her company is called CREAVILIA. In addition to her agency, Bérengère also co-founded the French Cluster; which is a pool of experts that help French entrepreneur

In this second part of my interview with the wonderful Marilyn Gardner, we will focus on her insights and tips that led her to become a successful blogger and writer, in addition to the portable job she created for herself. She will also share the struggles she had with repatriation and how she coped with it. Marilyn Gardner is an American third culture kid who grew up in Pakistan. Currently she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As she says, her claim of fame is that she gave birth to 5 kids on 3 continents, and went on to raise them in Pakistan and Egypt before moving to the United States. Marilyn is an author, speaker, trainer and consultant. In fact, along the years she has found a unique way to combine her experience in healthcare as a nurse with her journey navigating across cultures. She for instance began blogging in 2011 following a trip to Pakistan where she worked as a nurse with internally displaced people. The blog turned into a book called Between Worlds: Essays on Cu

Marilyn Gardner is an American third culture kid who grew up in Pakistan. Currently she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As she says, her claim of fame is that she gave birth to 5 kids on 3 continents, and went on to raise them in Pakistan and Egypt before moving to the United States. Marilyn is an author, speaker, trainer and consultant. In fact, along the years she has found a unique way to combine her experience in healthcare as a nurse with her journey navigating across cultures. She for instance began blogging in 2011 following a trip to Pakistan where she worked as a nurse with internally displaced people. The blog turned into a book called Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging This is the first part of my interview with the wonderful Marilyn Gardner she shares with us how she managed to blend her multicultural background and nursing skills to find her zone of genius and build a portable career. Glimpse on Marilyn’s insights in this episode: What she learned abou

Erin Long is an American and a certified speech therapist. She quit her job to join her husband who works for the Foreign services and went to live with her family in both Mexico and Brazil. Today she lives in Serbia. While moving from one country to another she had the brilliant idea to start online speech therapy services, World Wide Speech, to help the English native speaking community around the world; particularly expat children. She created her company Worldwide Speech and became a certified practitioner by the American Telemedicine Association in telepractice. For the last five years, she has become a leader in teletherapy within the speech-pathology community influencing teletherapy policy and training programs. Glimpse on Erin’s insights in this episode: How she went from being a speech therapist to building a real business. The lessons she learned to build the right team and grow her business. The legal aspects she had to take care of to protect herself and her business.

Olga Mecking comes from Poland and she had moved the first time to Canada to join her German boyfriend at the time. They then moved together to Germany. A marriage and three kids later, she now lives with her family in the Netherlands. Olga is a blogger, writer, and translator. She has co-written four books and writes for a variety of publications about life abroad, raising children, and traveling. Olga is a regular contributor to Multicultural Kid Blogs, where she is also a board member. Her writings have been published on Scary Mommy, Mamalode, and The Huffington Post just to name a few. Glimpse on Olga’s insights in this episode: How she deals with the overwhelming quantity and diversity of parenting advice. How she deals with parenting judgments from outsiders and cultural differences. The major event that led her to start writing. Her tips to start a successful blog.  Olga’s books: Dutched Up!: Rocking the Clogs Expat Style Only Trollops Shave Above the Knee: The Crazy, Bri

Kristin Louise Duncombe was born to American diplomats and raised in various countries. Today, she lives in Geneva and is a psychotherapist who specializes in working with international and expatriate families. Kristin is also an author. Her first book was selected as one of the Best Indie Reads of 2013. It is called Trailing: A Memoire, which tells her experience as a “trailing spouse” who followed her Medecins Sans Frontières husband in East Africa to help the populations that were suffering from wars and disease. Kristin also just published a new book called “Five Flights Up: Sex, Love, and Family, from Paris to Lyon”. This time she recounts her story adapting to a new lifestyle in France and reconfiguring everything she thought she knew about her "expat life”. Glimpse on Kristin’s insights in this episode: In the previous episode, Kristin Duncombe shares her story “trailing” with her husband in East Africa and why she insists on using this term “trailing spouse”. She explains i

Kristin Louise Duncombe was born to American diplomats and raised in various countries. Today, she lives in Geneva and is a psychotherapist who specializes in working with international and expatriate families. Kristin is also an author. Her first book was selected as one of the Best Indie Reads of 2013. It is called Trailing: A Memoire, which tells her experience as a “trailing spouse” who followed her Medecins Sans Frontières husband in East Africa to help the populations that were suffering from wars and disease. Kristin also just published a new book called “Five Flights Up: Sex, Love, and Family, from Paris to Lyon”. This time she recounts her story adapting to a new lifestyle in France and reconfiguring everything she thought she knew about her "expat life”. Glimpse on Kristin’s insights in this episode: In this first part of our interview, Kristin Duncombe shares her story “trailing” with her husband in East Africa and why she insists on using this term “trailing spouse”. S

Jeremy Piccoli has some great insights to share with us as a male trailing spouse but also as a professional who helps companies plan expat packages for their employees. Jeremy comes from the US and is now an expat partner living in Basel, Switzerland. He used to work for the International Assignment Services group of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston before he joined the company AIRINC as a Tax Manager providing tax data and consulting to multinational companies. When his wife was offered an opportunity to move to Switzerland for a one to 2 years assignment, Jeremy managed to negotiate with his employer to work from Basel, which came with the added benefit of servicing their European client base from the same time zone. The AIRINC Company is specialized in providing Housing, Cost of Living, Hardship, Tax and other global mobility data and advisory services to multinational companies. Glimpse on Jeremy's insights in this episode: What are the important things that companies and emp

Kirsten de Greling-Visman is Dutch Canadian raised as an expat child across the Netherlands, Canada, the Dutch Antilles, the US, France and Spain. Kirsten then settled and built her career in the Netherlands as a program manager and career advisor in Universities. In 2007, although she was offered three major positions by various universities, she took the decision to leave her promising career to join her French-finish fiancé who was sent to Albania for his job. Since then they had 2 boys and have been moving across Africa to Cameroon, Burkina Faso and now they live in Zambia. While moving from a country to another, Kirsten has been able to take few job assignments but also trained to become a certified coach. Today she is a career coach, helping expat partners redefine their identity, rediscover their passion and reconnect to a life and career they love. Glimpse on Kirsten’s insights: What is happening in Zambia, what are the riots about and how she is experiencing it. What she did after going throug

Karen Wilmot was born in South Africa. When she grew up she followed the footsteps of her mom and became a Midwife. Also, her passion for traveling took her around the world. Her career has allowed her to work on a diamond mine in South Africa, in a small village in Mexico, in a military hospital in Saudi Arabia and with the Royal family of Oman. In Oman, she also established between 2009 and 2015 the first private community services supporting expat women during pregnancy and birth. It was seeing how valuable this service was, coupled with her desire to go travelling again that gave her the amazing idea to go virtual. She decided to become a Virtual Midwife and build an interactive online platform providing personalized care, information and support for women who have limited or no access to quality prenatal advice and care. She offers both online support and a VIP fly in/fly out service. Download Karen's Top 10 tips to giving birth abroad!

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:   What is the Hague Convention and how does it affect expat families

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 mo

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 r

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 li

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: You are looking for a job. You are building or developing a business. You are going through a transition period, such as when you just arrive in a new country. You are a stay-at-home mom. We will also discuss: How to answer the question “what brought you here?” when you don’t want to start a conversation mentioning the job assignment of your spouse that took you to the country where you

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

Dear Listeners, Thank you for your feedbacks! I have taken them into consideration, and made some changes on your podcast Tandem Nomads. Tandem Nomads is turning into a weekly podcast show. Tune in this episode and find out more! With care, Amel

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

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