This piece is the fifth in a series of “Ask an Alum” columns that will be periodically published online through a partnership between Elon University’s Young Alumni Council and The Pendulum.
I was twenty-two years old, a top business student with a list of job offers and in love with a “good guy with a good career.” But my heart was calling for me from Asia.
With one major in international business and a second in Asian/Pacific studies, I inherently knew a career abroad was on my path, but I didn’t know when. While studying abroad in Japan my junior year after studying the Japanese language for three years at Elon University, I had several business contacts that I’d meet regularly to talk about business in Japan, sushi etiquette or just to practice their English. At the end of my semester abroad, days away from my flight home, one of these contacts offered me a summer internship in Tokyo working for his pharmaceutical company. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But I had a boyfriend. Yep, that “good guy.” So I gave up the internship abroad. I was scared! I didn’t want to lose him! Unfortunately, I could never let it go.
That was my trigger. “If ever I’m going to work abroad, I want to do it now,” I wrote in my book, “instead of being uprooted from friends and family later in life.” Also, I didn’t want to wait for if and/or when a company would tell me I could. I wanted to give myself permission, even if it was more difficult.
So I broke up with the boyfriend and started to research how to work abroad. Everyone thought I was crazy. Friends, family, mentors, professors all said it couldn’t be done. They hadn’t known anyone that had! It was rare. I can count on a single hand how many people said yes. Two of them I had never met in person.
This was before LinkedIn and before the financial crisis. I resorted to old-school networking, which was emailing outreach to everyone that knew me asking, “Do you know anyone in Asia?” over and over again. Before I knew it, one person had introduced me to three people, and those three people introduced me to two people, and I had a list of 50 people to talk to about working abroad in Asia. And thus, it became tangible.
Skype call after Skype call, all of the leads I received responded the same way: “You sound great and you look great on paper, but it just doesn’t make sense for us to hire you if we’ve never met in person.” After hearing this 5-plus times, I knew I could do it. I had my green light. I just needed to get there!
It was April 2007, a month before graduation. I’d officially said no to the domestic job offers on the table and got online to purchase my one-way flight. I took an entire chapter of my book to describe the day I booked my flight because of my mother’s reaction. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. “Why are you leaving your family again?” she asked in disappointment.
But that was it. I was ready to go. On July 3, 2007, I flew one-way to Singapore with a budget of $2,000 cash and a time frame of two months. "If I don’t find a job before either of those run out, I’ll come home," I told everyone. But I had to try.
Within six weeks, I had five job offers and the last one was from Toyota Motor Asia Pacific working as Senior Executive Officer and Kaizen Leader for fourteen Asian countries at the age of twenty-two.
For three years I served the company, traveling on average 180,000 miles a year just for work, with my main projects in the Philippines and India. In July 2010, I decided it was time to return home to the States for a variety of personal and professional reasons, but mainly because I wanted to write my book, "One White Face," a memoir about my experience abroad. Since the release of the book, I’ve been on a nationwide speaking tour telling the story and encouraging others to reach outside their comfort zone, a message I wished someone had given me way back when everyone was telling me not to.
Join the Young Alumni Council Nov. 13 at 6:30 p.m. for another Twitter Chat about working abroad and moving to a brand new city. Learn how to get out of your comfort zone. You can find them at #ElonTweets. Bring your questions and they will bring the answers!
Hilary Corna graduated from Elon in 2007. You can follow her on Twitter at @HilaryCorna, get updates through her Facegroup at www.Facebook.com/OneWhiteFace, or visit www.OneWhiteFace.com.