Career By Choice's Expat Professional & Business Success Tips

In Fortune Small Business Magazine & CNN: A Career Coach's World Without Borders

Recently an article was published about me (Megan Fitzgerald) in Fortune Small Business Magazine entitled, "A Career Coach's World Without Borders: An American entrepreneur runs a global career-coaching business from the Eternal City." The article was also published on the CNN Money website, as well as a short video about my journey to becoming a career coach in Rome.

I'm sharing the video here in the hopes that it might inspire others to take the leap as I did to building a career abroad. Enjoy!

Report Shows Impact of Employers' Lack of Expatriate Career Management Support

Writer, author and expat expert Robin Pascoe sent me an report a little while ago written by Yvonne McNulty, international human resources management expert and PhD candidate at Monash University in Australia. The report, "Measuring Expatriate Return on Investment in Global Firms", was written as part of Yvonne's doctoral research on management and measurement of international assignees.  Yvonne is well known in the expatriate community for her 2005 report summarizing her research on accompanying spouse issues on international assignments entitled The Trailing Spouse Survey.

Although I encourage you to read this recent report on expat ROI in its entirety, I wanted to point out a few points that I think every expat on assignment and global organization employing expats should be aware of:

•  The report points to the importance of including both financial and non-financial outcomes in the evaluation of an expatriate's assignment in order to more accurately evaluate an expatriate's performance and the strategic impact it has on the company. With today's global crisis in an increasingly global marketplace, understanding the value an expatriate contributes to a company is extremely important in assessing how best to utilize often already overstrained resources. From an expat's point of view, being able to articulate the value you brought to a company while working abroad is crucial in leveraging the experience to your advantage.

Paguro's New Shell: More Resources for Expat Professionals and Entrepreneurs

Back in March of 2008 I wrote a blog post about Paguro, a free online resource for expatriates developed by Patrizia Figoli Turchetti. Being an expatriate in Nigeria, England, Norway, France, Mexico and the US, Patrizia has experienced the difficulties that expats face and hence understands what resources would be most useful to help them during periods of transition.

I am happy to report that Paguro has just relaunched with a new interface and design. Patrizia has resdesigned the site to better showcase many of its new and interactive features.

I wanted to share a few words from Patrizia herself about the new features:

The new Paguro's advantage is that the content is more accessible to the users both as readers and contributors.  On the homepage you will see two new tool bars. The grey toolbar covers all things expat such as information at city level, about a life on the move, and resources for working abroad, while the turquoise toolbar has the potential to be all about you!

This turquoise tool bar gives you access to the interactive core of Paguro, the place where you can "bee" part of the Paguro BuZz, the Paguro community, where you can connect with other expatriates around the world through the forums, find expat networks and share your own information through your dedicated web space: my paguro.

You can find like-minded people by creating an area of interest within one of the Paguro BuZz forums, or join the ones already created by fellow expats, such as one about art or travel in South America.

Paguro BuZz is a wonderful world where people living all over the globe can reach out to each other to help fellow expats ease their transitions from one location to another. Keeping in touch with people on a daily basis is a great tonic when your life has just been turned upside down by moving to a new city.  Finding someone to share your thoughts and concerns with is important, and Paguro BuZz can help you do that!

"My Paguro" is the greatest asset that has been added to the new shell. You can add news, photos, events, articles and you can even have your own message board. For each of these items you can decide at any time to select who has access, just yourself or a few friends or the entire world!

And this is just the beginning, with you we are planning to get even better equipped over time.

Patrizia asked if I would create a column on the new Paguro, so you will also find a section entitled "Megan's Expat Career Corner". In this area of the site I will be posting from time to time on my areas of expertise: personal branding, expat careers, portable careers and businesses, and networking on- and offline for career and business success abroad.

Patrizia has some great ideas for this site, and I look forward to this site growing into even a more valueable resource than it has already proven to be to expatriates worldwide.

Keep us posted Patrizia!

Trailing Spouse Network: Resource for Expat Professionals and Expat Entrepreneurs

It's been an incredibly busy week. I"ve been on travel a lot for work and I am catching up on many fronts, gearing up for my two week holiday to the north of Italy - Lombardy and the Northern Lakes Region. I can't wait! Family is in town and it's been so good to see them. It's a wonderful reminder that although skype video chats are a great way to stay connected, it's important to be proactive about creating opportunities to spend time in person with those we care about most when you are an expatriate.

So on the subject of families and catching up....I recently caught up with Jeff Porter, the Ausmerican and founder of the Trailing Spouse Network (TSN).

Jeff and I first met via a podcast he ran on issues related to trailing spouses back in 2007.  Shortly following that podcast we connected via skype and had discussed the shifting of tides in the career arena for expat spouses and things that could be done to support them.  Jeff was the first male trailing spouse I had the pleasure of meeting, so it was great to hear about some of the trailing spouse issues from a male perspective.  Being an expat career and personal branding coach (and an accompanying spouse myself), I often work with trailing spouses so we had a lot of things to talk about.

It's been a little while since that chat - but the professional support needs of trailing spouses is still a primary concern for both of us.

I'd like to share a little about the work that Jeff has been doing with the TSN for those readers that consider themselves a trailing spouse (or accompanying spouse) - or have a spouse who is struggling to build a professional life abroad.

Women Who Tech Telesummit - Women Breaking New Ground in Technology and Changing the World

I will be participating this week in a fantastic event - Women Who Tech Telesummit. This event brings together talented and renowned women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy skills to transform the world and inspire change. I wanted to share the news with my readers and encourage you share this information with others. I'll be on the Innovation and Tech Career Reinvention panel, but there are many other panels that would be of great interest to women in technology and active in social media.

Given the amount of work I do with technology professionals and professionals who are working to make the world a better place in the areas such as renewable energy, corporate social responsibility, health, gender-based violence, consumerism and the media, I can't wait to attend some of these amazing panels! For only 10 USD you can learn from some of the women on the cutting edge of technology and social change from around the world - all from the comfort of your own home!

Here is a message direct from Allyson Kapin, Partner at Rad Campaign and founder of this fantastic event:

Registration is now open for the 2009 Women Who Tech TeleSummit scheduled for May 12, 2009 from 11AM EST to 6PM EST. I'm so excited about this year's line up and I know you will be too. Check it out!

Women have really rocked the tech and social media world this past year and we are proud to be featuring Lisa Stone of BlogHer, Allison Fine of Personal Democracy Forum, Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare, Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas, Holly Ross of NTEN, Rebecca Moore of Google Earth Outreach and so much more.