Expat Women July Home Page

Hi Everyone! We hope you are really well. Our news today is that we just uploaded our July Home Page, if you would like to take a look:

Success Story: Paula Lucas
Founder of the American Domestic Violence Crisis Line
Paula lived what looked like an ideal life in the UAE: A Newsweek photo-journalist husband, worldwide travel, a successful business and beautiful sons. But in reality, she was trapped by domestic violence. Her chance to escape materialized, thanks to a thief…

Globe Women Summit Report
5-7 June, Hanoi, Vietnam
Have you ever wondered what 1,000 women, from 72 economies, would talk about if they were gathered together in the same room? Well, at the recent Globe Women Summit, it certainly was not football, cars or plasma televisions, that’s for sure…

Expat Confession: No Money Left
We answer this confession:
"In a few months, my partner and I will be returning to home base. We have enjoyed postings in Bangkok, Madrid, Berlin and now Vietnam, indulged in amazing holidays, eaten at spectacular restaurants and basically had a lifestyle that was second-to-none. The problem now is that this move home has made us realize that we have no more than two months’ salary saved in our joint bank account – which is virtually nothing. This is causing us both great anxiety, as we now see that we have been a little careless with our impressive salaries abroad and we are concerned that we have not set ourselves up properly for the future. What can we do?"

Eliminating Negative Talk: 5 Easy Steps
Thanks to Rebecca Wells
"At any stage in life you can encounter feelings of self-doubt and lethargy. It is estimated that we each have between 5,000 and 15,000 negative thoughts a day – rearing their ugly heads most prevalently when we are feeling vulnerable. Although moving and living abroad can be extremely exciting and often a positive step to make in life, it can also bring with it new challenges that test you to your limit and can leave you doubting your capabilities..."

Gap Years: Myths & Tips
Thanks to Jenny Early
"Gap Years seem to be like Marmite and world wars: They divide people into two groups - those who believe and those who do not. They may be a mistake for some, but for the majority, I am sure they are not..." Read Jenny's myths and tips...

LARM: Latin American Relocation Management
Valued Partner
Thanks to our friends at Trafimar Relocations (Relocation Specialists: In & Out of Mexico), we now have a relationship with LARM (who we have promoted on our home page for July, then will go on to feature on our Latin American pages for the rest of the year). If you are looking for relocation services in/out of Latin America, please do check out LARM's site first.

"LARM, is Latin America’s leading relocation service company. For the past thirty years, this group of 20 companies, in 19 locations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, has provided exceptional relocation services to thousands of corporate and individual customers."

Join ExpatWomen
And finally... we are sending out our July newsletter in the next 2-3 days. If you do not already receive our newsletters, please support us by signing up today. New members receive our Free E-Book: Winning Stories.

Thank you very much - and here's wishing you a fabulous July!

Business Networks In Australia

If you are looking for business networks in Australia, here is a great link that we discovered today, on Australian woman Robyn Henderson's website.

Robyn, who spoke at an event recently that we unfortunately missed, is a self-acclaimed networking expert, speaking more than 120 times per year, across 11 countries, without ever advertising.

Robyn generously lists all of her favourite networks (women-focussed and otherwise) in Australia by State and provides this information free on her website. Thanks Robyn!

Moving To Spain?

Thanks to oppSpain.com, who wrote to us recently to offer to contribute, we added three articles to our Spain Links & Expat Clubs page this week:

• Spanish Property Today: Post-Boom Influences
  by Patrick Collins
• Bringing a Car to Spain
  by Ciara Carruthers
• Spanish School System
  by Ciara Carruthers

If your company would like to contribute useful articles to ExpatWomen.com, feel free to drop us a line, anytime. Thanks and best wishes for your weekend! Andrea

WEXPO - A Forum For Women In Business

At their recent Summit of > 1,000 women from all over the world, Globe Women launched their new online directory for women's businesses: WEXPO.

Listing on the directory is free and open to all women, so if you would like to:

• Showcase your product or service;
• Connect with business women worldwide;
• Find a client or supplier; and/or
• Network with established business leaders...

...you might like to check out WEXPO today.

Asian Women Entrepreneurs' Conference, South Korea, September 2008

Hi Everyone, I recently met Moon Kyung Choi, the Director of the Korean Women Entrepreneurs Association (Note: This website is only in Korean). She asked me to please promote their upcoming Asian Women Entrepreneurs' Conference in Seoul, 25 - 27 September, 2008, to our Expat Women members.

Apparently, they are expecting 300 Asian women entrepreneurs to attend, including Asian women leaders and CEOs. If you are an Asian woman entrepreneur, you might like to email Moon Kyung for more information. (She gave me an English brochure, so I know they have the info in English, ready to give out.)

Best wishes, Andrea.

Women Run The World

Do you run, or would you like to? If yes, you may like to check out Amy Montemarano's groovy new website: Women Run The World, which is a new social networking website designed to help women travelers find running partners all over the world.

On the site, travelers can find women running partners, running clubs that welcome out-of-town visitors to their group runs, and upcoming races at their destination. Plans are in the works to add special private online groups to connect women traveling to specific professional conferences and to connect alumnae of women's colleges. Amy says:

"Women account for 40 percent of all business travelers, according to a March 2003 survey conducted by the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University (NYU Tisch Center) and sponsored by Wyndham International, Inc.

Yet, women who travel are often left with two unpleasant alternatives for their regular run: hitting the treadmill in a cheerless hotel gym or running solo through an unfamiliar city, often in the early darkened hours before the business day begins.

Women Run The World.com (WRW) offers a way to partner up with local residents or other women travelers (who may be attending the same business conference or meeting). Women travelers can now shake off the jet lag, breathe fresh air, and stretch their legs, while avoiding the tedium of the hotel gym and the security concerns of running alone.

100% of the profits from the site will go to micro-financing programs for women entrepreneurs around the world. Women helping women run the world, so to speak."

Thanks for contacting us Amy and good luck with your site!

Confused About Social Media, Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Podcasts, Twitter And More?

If you politely smile when these topics are mentioned, but are secretly confused about what they really mean and how they might apply to you, try visiting the CommonCraft Show. This online source of quick, user-friendly video explanations "in plain English" is excellent. Bravo CommonCraft.

Thanks go to Martina, an expat woman in Europe, for reminding us about CommonCraft.

Got An Expat Story To Share?

Dear Friends, If you have an expat story to share, we would LOVE to hear from you. Why? Our Expat Women readers' Stories section has nearly 200 self-submitted stories, however, this month we have only had one story submitted and it is very lonely.

We are sure that you all have LOTS of stories to share, so please jump here and submit one for us. Your stories help to build a wonderful free database of experiences for expats of all shapes and sizes - and offer a real sense of global connection and community.

Ideally, we are looking for stories between 250 and 1,000 words. Read more Story Guidelines. Thank you very much and best wishes for your weekend!

Entrepreneurial Women's International Tradeshow, Seattle, U.S., 5 - 7 September

If you are a female international entrepreneur who would like to learn more about selling your goods in either the US market and/or the Japan/Asia market, Eri Takahashi of CUDA Consortium International Inc. has asked us to let you know about CUDA's upcoming 1st Annual Entrepreneurial Women’s International Tradeshow in Seattle, Washington, United States - and the discounts they are extending to Expat Women Members.

The tradeshow will take place in Seattle’s tallest skyscraper, the Colombia Tower Club, from 5 - 7 September 2008. The stated purpose of the tradeshow is to:

• Introduce innovative products;
• Gain feedback from entrepreneurial women colleagues regarding business structures, strategies, and products;
• Expand access to international business markets;
• Access direct consumer product feedback and response via your product display booths; and
• Explore partnering with other complementary entrepreneurial women’s enterprises.

Eri's prices for Expat Women Members (exclusive of airfare, of course) are:

• Participant from the US: US$99 (instead of US$120): including seminar participation, public tradeshow, and concluding celebration. Hotel can be arranged at their discount price for participants from outside Seattle.
• International Participant: US$1,120 (instead of US$1,320): including seminar and workshop, public tradeshow, concluding celebration, hotel (4 nights/person), food (during seminar, tradeshow) and sightseeing.
• International Exhibitor: US$1,420 (instead of US$1,520): including seminar and workshop, VIP tradeshow, public tradeshow, concluding celebration, hotel (4 nights/person), food, sightseeing and one extra complimentary event pass if you would like to bring a friend (however, hotel and food are not included in this price for the additional person).

For more information please Click Here. Thank you.

Special Thanks To You From Robin Pascoe (Family Matters Survey)

Hi Everyone, I talked just now with Robin Pascoe, the Expat Expert, in Canada. She wanted me to send a special thanks to everyone who responded to her requests for help with her recent Family Matters Survey, which we blogged about in February and in May.

Originally Robin was hoping for 250-300 responses from all of her sources. Well, the survey has now closed and Robin has been overwhelmed with 655 workable surveys - from people spread across 62 countries and representing 44 nationalities. Well done Robin - and well done respondents!

One of the wonderful things about Robin's survey is that approximately 30% of her respondents were men - which Robin says is unusual for an expat survey.

Stay tuned for Robin's survey results towards the end of the year, with Robin's e-book due out in November.

Best wishes for your day/evening! Andrea

Are You An Expat Angel?

If you enjoy helping and mixing with expats in your location (much like our Mentors did, when we had that section running on our own Expat Women site), you might like to volunteer on Expat Angels, a site launched last week.

My understanding, from meeting last week in Singapore with the creative force behind Expat Angels (a French-American guy by the name of Sébastien Deschamps), is that this new Expat Angels site will later morph into a dedicated section of Sébastien and his team's upcoming grander site, InterExpat (which is really still in the developmental stage until the official launch in September 2008).

Here are some words from Sébastien:

"The Expat Angels Network is a vibrant network of friendly and active people on expat earth! Expat Angels act as mentors, organizing local events or gatherings, influential in their local communities or simply friendly locals or expats always ready to share their experience. Each Angel can define what area of 'expertise' they are most interested in covering (eg. sports, parenting, events etc).

If you feel that you could be an Expat Angel too, sharing your experience and local knowledge, helping others and having serious fun with the other Angels and the community, come and join us! Thank you very much."

Best wishes, Andrea.

Global Nomads Networking Site & Dinners

If you self-identify as a global nomad, you might be interested in Janera.com, the new online magazine and social networking site which also hosts intimate dinner salons around the world for around thirty guests, primarily "social scientists, business people and cultural thought leaders".

To date, the founder Janera Soerel, has conducted dinner salons in Washington D.C., Rome, Curaçao, and New York City. With local co-hosts, her next events are scheduled to be in Istanbul, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Miami and Buenos Aires. She is also hosting the first Global Nomad Retreat in Tuscany, 7 - 13 September 2008.

If you are interested in the Istanbul dinner on 26 June, co-hosted by Anastasia M. Ashman, co-editor of Tales from the Expat Harem, at which Turkey-based experts will guide a dinner discussion on the evening’s topic: "Turkey's East/West Identity", anchored by: Ersin Akarlılar, the CEO of Mavi Jeans; Neşe Gündoğan, the secretary general of the National Turkish Olympic Committee; Şerif Kaynar, the country managing director of executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry; Ferhan Alesi, a global intercultural trainer; and Tara Hopkins, an Open Society/Soros Foundation grantee and American activist, please urgently reply here.

To learn more about Janera.com, especially if you are interested in a future dinner, you can watch a 3.5 minute You Tube video here.

Have a great week!

Have You Seen The Expat TV Show?

If you are (or intending to be) an expat in The Netherlands, you might like to check out the Expat TV Show, which we learnt about this week when their Operations Manager sent us the link. The shows we viewed online were very interesting and if you are in the business of targeting expats, what a great way to try to target the 150,000 expats in The Netherlands.

If you would prefer to mingle in-person, the TV show mentioned that the next Feel At Home In The Hague - International Community Fair (profiled in their first episode, and which attracted 4,000 attendees at last year's event) will be held on 28 September 2008. Enjoy.

Dubai Documentary: Night Secrets

When visiting Dubai Sunshine (a blog on our Expat Women Blog Directory) today, we found this interesting Frontline World documentary by Mimi Chakarova: Dubai: Night Secrets - The Oldest Profession In The Newest Playground.

This documentary is actually not unique to Dubai. If you have lived in Asia (or other places with similar issues), you will know what we mean. It only runs for 12 minutes and it is quite well done.

So, what is Frontline World? After viewing the documentary, we were curious, so we checked out the Frontline World site and it says that it "is a national public TV series that turns its lens on the global community, covering countries and cultures rarely seen on American television." Other fascinating-looking documentaries include:

• Guatemala: The Secret Files - How Silicon Valley Helps Uncover a Dirty War
• Mexico: Crimes at the Border - The Business of Human Smuggling
• China: Out of the Rubble
• Zimbabwe: Shopping For Survival
• Burma: No Turning Back
• Egypt: Food Riots
• Pakistan: Student Resistance
• and many more...

If you are looking for some interesting features and alternative news sources, you might like to add Frontline World to your list.

500 Expat Women Blogs

A very sincere thank you goes out today to our Expat Women Bloggers, who by self-listing their blogs on our site, have helped us pass our 500-blog milestone on our Expat Women Blog Directory.

If you have not checked out the directory, I encourage you to do so, as Bloggers share a wealth of information and insights about their expat locations - that you just cannot get elsewhere on traditional expat content pages. It's on blogs that you'll usually get the 'real deal'.

Here are our running category totals in the Directory:
Oceania 14
Africa 26
Middle East 48
Asia 73
Americas 78
Europe 241
Service Providers to Expats 21

Living as an expat woman and got a Blog to list? Please list your blog Here, so we can grow the directory to 1,000 Blogs and beyond...

Thank you so much, Andrea.

Just Checking In...

Hi Everyone, Just a quick post to explain why it has been so quiet.

As mentioned in a previous post, I came this week to Hanoi, Vietnam, to attend the annual Global Summit of Women, which is rotated around the different global regions each year. For example, the previous three years were in Germany, Mexico and Egypt. Next year's conference will be in Chile. Mark your calendars if you are interested. :-)

More than 1,000 women attended. 300 women were Vietnamese, so a strong local contingent. Plus many women from neighbouring Asian countries. Around 70 countries were represented in total. I will write more when I am back at home base.

Best wishes for your week, Andrea.

Expat Women June Newsletter

Hello Everyone. Earlier today, we sent out our June newsletter - packed yet again with some really interesting interviews and articles. In addition to our June home page features listed in a previous post, the newsletter also included:

Samantha Honey's article: Oil Wives Save The Planet - 7 Ways Expat Women in Oil-Rich Countries Can Help

Ginnie Bedggood's article: Whoever Told You Mañana Means Tomorrow? mentioned in a recent blog post.

Sondra's Winning Story: Experiencing France (written in the format of a poem, but it still takes the prize this month). Congratulations Sondra, an American living in France.

The name of the winner of this month's fabulous Explorer Publishing giveaway.

An advert for Going-There - Global Destination Services, who are looking for expat women interested in becoming relocation consultants in their expat location. (Great idea!)

...and more...

If you did not receive a copy, you can view it online here. If you believe you should have received a copy, please write to us, with the name and email address that you believe we should have on our database.

Thanks and best wishes!

Global Talent Management Summit

The IQPC (International Quality & Productivity Center), a true leader in bringing together the best possible speakers for conferences worldwide, is hosting this year a Global Talent Management Summit, branded Winning The Global War For Talent, from 25 - 27 August, in Chicago, Illinois, US. Exact venue yet to be confirmed.

Some time ago, we agreed to promote the conference for them (which is why they are featured on our Expat Women home page for the month of June) in exchange for our logo being on their site, because the conference sounded very useful and relevant to (particularly) the HR Managers in our audience.

However... when we read their updated list of speakers just over a week ago, we very, very impressed and now we are even more pleased to help promote the conference. Take a look:

Matthew Paese, Vice President, Executive Solutions, Development Dimensions International
Casey Clemence, SVP HR, International Assignments, Bank of America Corporation
Lisa Lindores, Director, Global Leadership Capability and Talent Management, Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett-Packard Company
Phil Hendrickson, Manager, Global Talent Sourcing Strategy, Starbucks Corporation
Andrew LaValle, Executive Director, Entertainment & Networks, Worldwide Recruitment & Executive Search, Time Warner, Inc.
Anthony Cerquone, Global Head Management Development, Novartis AG
Stacy Reyan, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, APCO Worldwide
Mark Murata, Global HR Director, APCO Worldwide
David A. Binkley, Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources, Whirlpool Corporation
Rebecca Nelson, Manager, Development Management, Microsoft Corporation
Julie Martin, Learning and Development Group Manager, Microsoft Online Services, Microsoft Corporation
Denise Broz, Director, Global Talent Management, McDonalds Corporation
Banks Lowman, Global Learning and Development Organization: Succession Planning Executive Development, Intel Corporation
John Balkema, Global Talent Manager, Caterpillar, Inc
Stephanie Lilak, Human Resources Director, International, General Mills, Inc.
Nancy Turner, Global Director, Leadership and Professional Development, Nike, Inc.
Kevin Cowherd, Learning Transformation Leader, IBM Corporation
Sheri Stolp, Director of Human Resources, Thomson Reuters

Conference prices:
US$1,799 if you register and pay by 20 June
US$1,999 if you register and pay by 25 July
US$2,199 standard price

If you are in the business of sourcing, advising and/or managing talent in your organization, and you are interested in taking part, we encourage you to Click Here to download a PDF brochure today. Maybe we might even see you there!