Meet the Authors
of A Career in Your Suitcase, 4th Edition
Serial Expat Entrepreneur Jo Parfitt
&
Expert Career Consultant Colleen Reichrath-Smith
Jo Parfitt
When professional writer Jo Parfitt joined her new husband in Dubai and received a stamp in her passport that read ‘Not Permitted to Take up Employment’ she was devastated. Since then she has let nothing prevent her from maintaining a professional identity regardless of regular intercontinental moves and the responsibilities of her family. Jo went on to create and sustain a shifting portfolio of portable careers, ranging from writing a cookbook called Dates in Oman through being a successful journalist in Dubai to running seminars and workshops worldwide from her current home in The Netherlands. In 1998 she realised it was time to write a book that would inspire and empower others to develop their own career in a suitcase too. 2013 sees the launch of the fourth edition of Career in Your Suitcase, this time in collaboration with Colleen. With a permanently evolving portable career to keep her busy, Jo has run Summertime Publishing since 1997 and now has 70 books in her stable, most of which are by or for other people living abroad. In 2012 she launched ExpatBookshop.com to enable her to promote them.
Find out more about Jo, her workshops, her consultancy and what makes her heart sing, through her blog at JoParfitt.com or via SummertimePublishing.com
Colleen Reichrath-Smith
Colleen believes in teaching people the skills they will need to make the most of their career journey, to make personally meaningful choices for their career. Colleen made an international transition in 2005 when she moved from Canada to the Netherlands for love after almost ten years working in the field of career development. Seeing it as the ultimate chance to apply the career development principles she teaches others, within two years she had learned the language and was again delivering career development training. This time in Dutch. After meeting Jo Parfitt at Connecting Women and the European Professional Women’s Network, Colleen decided to follow her intuition and discuss the idea of a book further with Jo. This edition of Career in Your Suitcase is the result and incorporates lessons learned and the career development principles needed for today’s mobile career adventurer.
Click here to book Colleen as a speaker for your next conference or event, or here to find out about Career in Your Suitcase workshops.