During my expat life, I have had the great fortune to live and work around the world. After starting my career in the hospitality industry in England, I started training restaurant managers around the UK. That led me to a training role with an international financial services company, and then I started taking on the jobs of those I trained. Whenever an opportunity became available, I raised my hand, which gave me the chance to learn different operations areas.

I relocated several times within England, took a role that had me commuting weekly to Frankfurt, and then relocated for roles in Delhi and Chennai, India, before going to Seoul, South Korea, and then on to Hong Kong. In 2013, after taking some time off from work to recover from early stage breast cancer, I finally landed in Boston.

Having experienced so many relocations, I consider myself the ultimate expat, however moving has never gotten easier. My employers always hired typical relocation services to move me. The experience was always the same. A crew would pack up my things and leave the boxes in the middle of a new apartment. The rest was left to me and stopped well short of true move management. The pressures of my positions became more and more time-consuming. I didn’t have time to go about setting up a whole new life.

Welcome to Boston’s South End

When I moved to Boston, I focused all my energy on the relocation. I coordinated the logistics of getting my things from Hong Kong to the U.S., unpacked myself and my spouse who had just returned from a work assignment abroad, organized our temporary rental home and then found us a permanent home in Boston’s South End, a neighborhood that was new to both of us. I had to figure out where the best coffee shop was, where to get a haircut, how to meet a running group and find local places to hike. I found a dry cleaner and a house cleaner, located the best place to get groceries, discovered an Asian specialty market that carried ingredients for recipes I picked up along the way. I even found a home cook who can make them for us when we want to indulge. I went about setting up our life, becoming a local.

This local connection was a luxury I never experienced in any of my prior moves. I didn’t have a job in an office with deadlines and expectations that required all of my focus and resulted in moving boxes sitting in my living room unopened for months as I cobbled together meals and weekend plans.

Unpacking and settling in

Then I became a permanent US resident and started to reconnect with people I knew in the corporate world. I was ready to get back to work, but I realized that my work passions had evolved from my former corporate career to the idea of starting my own business. I wanted to provide a service that I wished had been available during my many moves. I wanted to provide personalized relocation services that help busy professionals, and their families hit the ground running in both their work and home lives after landing in a new location. The rest is history. My business takes care of the details of settling into your new homes and neighborhoods. We take care of the details. You focus on transitioning from being new to town to becoming a local.