S5 Ep3: Jacinta Reddan

If you are a future repat thinking life back in Australia might be too slow, then you might fall off your chair during this podcast when you hear that Jacinta Reddan, the former CEO of AusCham in Hong Kong thinks her professional life is just as fast-paced in Cairns! Which is good for Jacinta, who admits her biggest fear of moving to tropical north Queensland and a city she had never lived in before, would be that she would be bored. Jacinta first left Melbourne in her early 20s for an 18-month stint in Hong Kong that turned out to be a decade long stay. Even when she returned to Melbourne to live, Hong Kong wasn’t quite out of her system and six years later after returning to Australia, she and her two young daughters headed back. Maintaining professional contacts and friends has been the thread that runs through the amazing career opportunities Jacinta has had both in Australia and in Hong Kong. In fact, it was a friend and colleague from her early days as a freshly minted journalist at the Warrnambool Standard that led her to her role at Advance Cairns and an exciting new life in Tropical North Queensland after over 20 years in Hong Kong. We talk in the podcast about how she has approached maintaining her connections with Australia, what learnings she gained from coming home the first time, how her two third-culture kids are coping with a home country that feels foreign and about her approach to life in Cairns. Her next ‘expat assignment’. Sneak preview: she is far from bored.