Did you have another day where you cleaned up your desk, wondered what you had achieved today, and got home to a stack of dishes, a pile of clothes, and a crying son? Did you spend last night driving your daughter to SCUBA class, squeeze in a conference call, and forget that it was your mother’s birthday? Did you then, at 11 pm, sit down thinking, “Why am I not moving on with my life?” Often, we think we are too busy to do the right thing—the book we want to draft, the Ph.D. we want to start, the Master’s thesis we want to finish. We keep putting the start off until we “are ready.” “We do not do what […]

Guest post by Plaxides Namutami In the high-stakes world of global business, there is a quiet, frustrating paradox: the most competent professionals are often the least visible. You have navigated cross-border mergers, managed diverse teams across time zones, and solved problems that would baffle most. You are, by every definition, a Global Rockstar. Yet, when a recruiter searches for your name or a potential partner visits your LinkedIn profile, they find a “digital ghost”, an outdated profile, a silent feed, or a narrative that belongs to a version of you from five years ago. And let’s not even talk about your headshot, made on your smartphone, and your CV that still looks like Times New Roman was a thing. In […]

You are Jason Bourne, you wake up in a hotel room in a Middle Eastern country. It’s too hot in your room. You sweat and you just woke up from a nightmare. You are not sure if this nightmare is a memory because you cannot remember who you are. How will it be possible for you to connect with anyone? How will you trust others if you do not even know who you are? What if you have changed your identity so often that you cannot even clearly pronounce your name? This is a challenge and you are probably shaking your head. “This is a movie, it’s not real.”.  Yes, but there is a truth in this movie that is […]

The Back-to-School Mood Rose petals sprinkled over my neglected Zen Garden, sunflower fields turned brown, and you have started to turn on the lights in the morning again. When you get home from work, you don’t want to sit outside anymore, as it is dark, but you might vaguely remember this feeling you had as a kid when you were playing hide and seek at this time of the year, and it was just a notch better because it got dark at dinner time.  This August was a bit like the “Summer of ‘69”. Finally, out again in the world, listening to “Rock’n’Roll Music” or “Jailhouse Rock.”  Still, my dear, fall is here. We can still have a glass of […]

Did you go to a party last night and ask Karen, the other Expat Spouse across from you, how she managed her transition to Switzerland? And did Karen say: “Just reinvent yourself!”. This is a dreadful sentence to tell any newbie in a new place.  This sentence is advice you often hear when you lose your work or are still looking for a new job in Switzerland.  You are a New York, London, Frankfurt, or Mumbai professional. You have a career stamped on yourself. Telling you to reinvent yourself is like saying, “Why don’t you just run a marathon after recovering from COVID-19.” People make it sound so simple; it makes you feel guilty and shameful because it seems to […]