Maggie Williams began her career in the NHS, working as an Anaesthetic and Emergency Practitioner, where she gained invaluable experience in high-pressure environments and developed a deep understanding of patient care and safety. Transitioning into operational management, Maggie quickly honed her leadership skills, overseeing complex systems and teams to improve efficiency and outcomes. In 2017, Maggie boldly moved to Portugal with her family, embarking on a new chapter in her career in global mobility. She successfully leveraged her extensive healthcare and operational management background, transferring her skills into a new industry. Since then, Maggie has been with BiCortex Languages and Translations, where she currently leads day-to-day operations and focuses on business expansion, client development, and operational growth. A natural leader, […]

We thought we should pull together the main reasons according to our experience that hinder Expat Spouse employment  in the host country. This is a non-scientific analysis based on opinions and experience. We identify eight major barriers to expat spouse employment and hope to help you overcome those.

We discussed how family challenges and marital issues significantly impact the outcome of international assignments. We also saw that many companies list the Expat Spouse’s unhappiness as the primary cause of “Expatriate Failure,” highlighting the importance of the Expat Spouse and Partner career support programs.  We will discuss more extensively the kind of support you can give Dual-Career Expat Couples and why that matters. I have always advocated for Global Mobility Managers to involve Expat Spouses proactively. Sometimes I sound like a broken record, though. I reiterate what I’ve been repeating for years. The days of the passive “trailing spouse,” when they were marginally involved in any decision to move abroad, are gone. Most expats (mobile employees) actively involve their […]

Once, I gave a talk discussing the Expat Experience in Zurich and how to enhance it. Zurich is a typical inbound hub, so many of the ideas in this article will also apply to places like Dubai, London, Hong Kong, or Singapore. As the most populated canton in Switzerland, Zurich is becoming home to an ever-growing population of expats. Today’s typical expats look like this expat couple: Heidi and Govind. Heidi is a Director who works in banking and is a credit guru. She met Govind, her husband, at the London School of Economics. From there, they moved to New York and later to Abu Dhabi. Govind now works for a pharmaceutical company that has stationed them in Abu Dhabi for the […]

We have lived in a world dominated by political, economic, and environmental uncertainty for many years. However, the past three years have been exceptional and challenging for most of us. The global health crisis caused by Covid-19 has brought the planet to its knees. The pandemic impacted all aspects of life and radically changed the way we work. The world of Global Mobility will never be the same. We are beyond Global Mobility and ride into a new way of working.  Considering the impact caused by the pandemic, it does not take a fortune teller to foresee that Global Mobility Managers will have to deal with the blow of the crisis in the years to come. If you thought that […]