Want to work around the world? Here's how these Top Companies workers made it happen

It's no secret that the world is getting smaller every day as more and more people become connected. As a result, having international experience is a valuable asset for any job seeker in today's professional landscape. But building a global career isn't as easy as connecting with someone overseas on LinkedIn. Not only does it, in many cases, take a multinational company that celebrates diversity in every sense of the word; it also takes a driven and open-minded individual.

These are the stories of five people with both incredible initiative and a zest for adventure — and the Top Companies that propped them up along the way in their career journeys. 

Mathilde Fouqué: Senior Project Leader at GE

It has long been Mathilde Fouqué’s dream to move to the United States. Although she's lived in five different countries and traveled extensively, she still yearned to move to the U.S. full time. When the company where she was working for 8 years was acquired by GE in 2015, she worried if her dream would ever come true.

“Because I had done rotations abroad with Alstom, I shared the view with them of some point really wanting to move to the U.S. for a role. I think everybody knew about it,” Fouqué told LinkedIn. “When the deal happened, I was completely new to GE. They didn’t know me, they didn’t know who I was, and they didn’t know about that dream.”

Fouqué worked to help integrate the two companies as part of the finance team despite her personal uncertainty. Nearly a year after officially joining the GE team, she worked up the courage to ask about the possibility of moving to the U.S. eventually. To her delight, and surprise, they made it happen in one month.

On October 9, 2016, Fouqué moved from Paris to Cincinnati with three large suitcases to join GE’s project management team. Over eight months later, Fouqué calls herself a Cincinnatian and has immersed herself in the city, taking classes at a cultural arts center in the city and making friends through CrossFit.

That is not to say she would not move again, though. She realizes that what made her move to Cincinnati particularly smooth was GE's consistent culture.

“Basically tomorrow I can go to GE anywhere in the world and I am 200% confident that I will feel the same culture,” Fouqué said. “That makes me really mobile...I know I can move to a different location in a beat.”

Karin Rotem-Wildeman: SVP Research & Development at PepsiCo 

After a Ph.D in chemical engineering, Karin Rotem-Wildeman thought she would go into the gas and petroleum industry. Instead, she was wooed into the food and beverage sector, excited by the opportunity to work with fun, international brands. After a start at Nestle, she found her way to PepsiCo where she’s developed her career over the past 16 and a half years, traversing across the company’s various categories and the globe. 

Rotem-Wildeman is now responsible for R&D and innovation around the world for PepsiCo beverages. Global groups, from China to Russia and beyond, report into her everyday. This international reach was built on years of experience across PepsiCo, including a stint in China where she built the company’s first R&D center in Shanghai in the early 2000’s.

“It gave me a real appreciation for local challenges,” said Rotem-Wildeman. “All those nuances, you can’t truly appreciate them unless you’re immersed in the culture.” 

She didn’t even speak Chinese when she arrived and was the first female expat in the local market. Rotem-Wildeman remembers that no one talked to her for the first three months. But, over time she built her team’s trust — and learned the language thanks to lessons three times a week. The experience also taught her a career-defining lesson: resilience.

It was the extreme version of being the new girl in class, and it equipped her with the skills necessary to dive into each new role across the company. After her four-year stint in China, Rotem-Wildeman would return to the U.S. and relocate five more times over to pursue new opportunities across PepsiCo. She dove into sectors as diverse as venture capital in Silicon Valley and the snack business in Texas and even helped develop PepsiCo’s nutrition category (brands like Quaker and Tropicana) as the chief of staff to the company’s chief scientific officer.

“Having the courage to plant yourself in a new market where you know no one and don’t have a network and are really on your own to make something happen is exhilarating but can be really tough at times, too. You need a lot of resilience and confidence in yourself, and you have to have some patience to also learn,” she said. “At the time it seemed like it was only relevant to China, but I’ve moved six times in 16 years for the company. Now, when I take on a new role, I ask: ‘What’s this role? What am I going to bring to it? And how am I going to make a difference?’ I think it applies whether it be a new category or a new country.”

Adam Sedo Gali: Corporate Communications at Amazon

Adam Sedo Gali grew up in a small town near Barcelona, Spain and moved to the city post-college. Over 14 years, he ran communications and PR for some of the city and region’s important institutions. Then, in September 2013, he was recruited to Amazon’s new Madrid headquarters — and he jumped at the opportunity.

Not only was it a chance to help build a brand new business — he was the first person to join the PR team at Amazon in Spain, which opened its doors in 2011 — but, it was also an opportunity to work for a multinational brand, one that would open up opportunities around the world and pay off in a very personal way.

Sedo Gali, who managed all internal and external communications in the country, joined the Spanish office at a key moment. Over his three and a half years, the office grew from about 30 people when he started to over 600 today. Though, he bid farewell to those coworkers only a month ago to move to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle.

The reasons were both personal and professional: Sedo Gali’s wife, Mar, who is a scientist with a Ph.D. in virtual reality, was offered a job in Seattle in February 2016. The two had already been apart for two years prior to that while Mar finished her doctorate and started her career.

“We knew mobility at Amazon was quite easy” said Sedo Gali. “That was really part of the decision.”

He kept his eye out for a role in Amazon’s corporate headquarters. And earlier this year, the right job landed. After nearly three years in different countries, the two finally share a home. No plane flights necessary.

The move isn’t without its professional perks. Sedo Gali is taking on a new challenge with the Seattle-based Corporate Communications team, working across international groups on new campaigns that showcase Amazon’s innovations.

 “I have been exposed to exciting new projects and been able to bring some of the initiatives my team and I created in Spain to the U.S.,” said Sedo Gali. “Cross-pollination of good ideas has accelerated, I have found new peers who approach my thoughts in a different way, encouraging me to think bigger and bolder.”

Kathy Julik-Heine: Senior Consultant at Deloitte

Kathy Julik-Heine just returned to the U.S. after being on assignment for Deloitte in Belgium and Vietnam for almost three years. So, how did a girl from a Minnesota town of about 1,000 people end up on global deployments in Europe and Asia?

Shortly after graduating college, where Julik-Heine developed an interest and expertise in international development, she joined Deloitte in its federal practice in Washington D.C. After a couple years of building out her core consulting skill set and getting to know the firm, she decided that she wanted to work overseas.

“I just kind of started saying it out loud to everyone,” Julik-Heine said. “It’s amazing how that works because not too long after I made that decision, an opportunity came along (...) in Deloitte’s AMEA region.”

She had been working in Belgium for about a year when an opportunity came up to pursue her particular passion when it comes to international development: supporting women. The role, however, was based in Vietnam. The chance to serve as the Operations Lead and Gender Specialist for the Hanoi-based project was too good to pass up. Julik-Heine packed up her bags and moved yet again.

All this travel is no doubt exciting, but it serves a more pointed role in her professional development.

“I didn’t feel I could be a super effective agent of some of these types of things if I didn’t really understand other parts of the world,” Julik-Heine said. “I think of things a lot more holistically and internationally now, like, ‘Okay this is what’s going on in the U.S. right now, but what’s the impact of that in other places?’”

If you want international experience, Julik-Heine says there are lots of opportunities to do so. There’s one caveat: You may not look exactly how you expected.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people that want to live overseas or want to travel for work and...they really only want to do it in one way and aren’t willing to take a lot of risk,” she said. “If it’s a perspective that you really value and want to gain, then get creative because there are lots of ways you can do it.”

Janine Wegner: Head of Entrepreneurship Strategy & Partnerships at Dell

Janine Wegner may have grown up in a small town in East Germany, but she has always had a travel bug. Her first big adventure was going to Salt Lake City, Utah as an exchange student in high school. She then went on to study in South Africa, France, the Netherlands and the UK during her college years.

Post college, she wanted to find a company with international reach but wasn’t sure she’d find the right fit in East Germany. However, right as she was about to move to Dublin to work for Facebook, she came across a suggested job posting on LinkedIn. It was for a social media and online marketing position in her area.

Wegner applied and started as an external consultant on Dell's global brand campaign team in October 2011. Numerous positions and four years later, Wegner was in charge of all of social media in her region and faced a decision.

"I was at a point where I could either continue in the path of being a specialist or I could really explore alternative marketing roles," Wegner told LinkedIn. "I love to work with people and help them in their careers; if I am only a specialist, I can only influence so much."

Needless to say, she went for the challenge and applied for Dell's marketing development program. Only eight to 12 individuals are hand selected by executives from an applicant pool of 60 to 100 global marketers. Wegner was one of the chosen applicants.

After a year in the program, Wegner faced another opportunity: the chance to relocate to Dell's headquarters in Round Rock, Texas. Again, she went for it.

"I love to explore new countries and new cultures and really wanted to continue that lifelong education journey on myself," Wegner said. "Professionally, I think that going to the headquarters of a company is good for networking and professional development."

Wegner continues to move within the company. She is about to hand off her current role as Head of Entrepreneurship Strategy & Partnerships and transition to a global communications position. For now, she will stay in Austin, where she has finally gotten used to the traffic and enjoys the nice weather all year long.

Additional reporting by Laura Lorenzetti Soper.