Below you will find a selection of the most recent entries from bloggers in our Work/Business section.
To view the entries from individual bloggers, click on the links below:
- Claire Doole - Claire Doole Communications
Claire is a former BBC correspondent and international spokeswoman who is passionate about helping people communicate with confidence. Since 2006, she has successfully trained hundreds of professionals in the art of presenting and public speaking, talking to the media, managing communications in a crisis, and writing for the web. In addition, she has coached C-level executives and public figures to give powerful TEDx and TED style talks in Europe and the Middle East. A Swiss and UK national, Claire trains and coaches in French and English.
- Elizabeth Ballin - Life Coach
As a long time member of the international community in Geneva, Elizabeth Ballin has been coaching adults and students from all parts of the world. She has coached business professionals, musicians/artists, couples, families and adolescents. She is a fully accredited Life Coach by the International Coaching Federation. Elizabeth Ballin, Life Coach
- Patrick Hoza - US Tax & Financial Services
Since 1990, Patrick has many years of experience with US individual expatriate taxation under his belt, including High Net Worth Individuals, streamline/voluntary disclosure filings and tax consulting, as well as working with large multinationals like Novartis, BP, Hewlett Packard and General Electric. He has extensive knowledge in serving both US expatriates and resident and non-resident aliens with their US tax-related issues. Patrick Hoza is a Tax Director at US Tax & Financial Services, with extensive experience in all aspects of Individual US tax and Expatriation, including Hight Net Worth Individuals and large multinationals.
Patrick started his career in 1990 in California, with Westpro Ltd., as a Senior Tax Consultant, then spent the middle part of his career working at KPMG and Ernst & Young. During his time with Ernst & Young, he worked and lived in Russia, France and finally Switzerland. He has gained a valuable working knowledge of the respective income tax regulations in all of these countries.
Patrick holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Colorado, is a member of the National Association of Enrolled Agents and is a Certified Acceptance Agent.
-
Melitta Campbell - Business Coach
Business Coach and Mentor with nearly 3 decades of business experience and a passion for helping women confidently build a business they love. She is also the founder of the Swiss Entrepreneurs Club and president of the Swiss Riviera Toastmasters Club in Montreux. Originally from Wales, she now lives in Montreux in a chalet she has renovated with her husband overlooking the Swiss Alps. - Sunita Sehmi - Walk The Talk
Founder of Walk The Talk, Sunita has been training, developing and now coaching Business Communication skills in both companies and educational establishments for over twenty years. She has a passion for helping people to maximise their potential and created Walk The Talk with the sole aim to drive each and every client to perform their best.
- Robert Harris- Forth Capital
With over 25 years experience working for some of the major financial institutions in the City of London, Robert is a founding partner of Forth Capital, the leading expat financial advisory company in Switzerland. Regulary quoted in newspaper articles and magazines, he is well placed to advise expats on a variety of financial issues that may arise during their time living in Switzerland.
- Debbie Croft - Croft Coaching
As the founder of Croft Coaching, Debbie has a passion for helping people overcome challenges, embrace change and live life to the full; with an ethos of “work hard, play hard”.
- Sarah Santacroce - Simplicity
A certified social media, internet marketing, and virtual event specialist, Sarah enjoys every aspect of small business marketing. Through her own business, Simplicity, it is her mission to help other small businesses and solopreneurs increase their visibility and use social media tools as part of their marketing strategy.
- Diana Ritchie - SSC Sàrl
A Director at Swiss Career Connections, Diana will provide you with some useful tips for job hunting.
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
Susan Anderson has devoted more than 30 years of clinical experience and groundbreaking research in working with victims of abandonment trauma.
Founder of the Abandonment Recovery movement, she is author of four books including Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Taming Your Outer Child, Black Swan: Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery and a WORKBOOK: Journey from Heartbreak to Connection.
“Of all human fears abandonment is the most primal. Left unresolved, this deep personal wound can linger beneath the surface where it undermines self-esteem and interferes in our relationships from within.”
Tell us about yourself. I’m a psychotherapist specializing in helping victims of abandonment trauma, as well as other types of loss and heartbreak. I’ve spent the past 30 years researching and writing about the abandonment and related issues of relationship conflicts, attachment, separation, addiction, grief, and personal growth.
What got you into abandonment and healing? Twenty years into my career as a psychotherapist specializing in abandonment, I had my own traumatic abandonment experience. The love of my life – my marital partner of 20 years, suddenly up and left me for another woman. I felt overwhelming pain and devastation, forcing me to realize that the tools I had been using to help my clients were simply not powerful enough to overcome the lasting effects of this trauma. There was nothing in the literature of psychology or self-help that offered any true remedy, so to help myself and to help others, I began researching new ways to repair abandonment’s painful wound. The result is the Five Stages of Abandonment and Recovery.
By Claire Doole, Claire Doole Communications
Many of the people I coach in the art of powerful presenting are highly intelligent and articulate. They are medical doctors, academics, bankers and lawyers.
But they are not journalists, like myself. They often don’t have an innate sense of storytelling or they know too much and struggle with getting the level of detail right.
This is where structuring your thoughts for maximum impact comes into play. I recommend two ways to structure your thoughts that will guarantee the audience is focused on the key messages, and not on trying to decipher meaning in a disorganized presentation.
IMPACT
All trainers love mnemonics – memory devices. Here is one to help you structure a presentation.
- Introduction – get the audience’s attention with a bang and make sure the benefits are clear.
- Main messages – outline your purpose and your key messages – what do you want the audience to take home so that you achieve your purpose? Do you want to inspire, sell, persuade or inform?
- Points – what are your main points? How are you going to structure them? Chronologically, most important to least important, geographically or thematically? Remember to support your points with facts, data and stories.
- Associate – make sure your supporting examples are relevant to your audience.
- Conclude and recap – summarize and repeat your key messages.
- Take-away – finish with a bang. This can be a call to action – what do you want your audience to do, feel or say as a result of your presentation?
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
A few months ago a friend of mine gave me a copy of the film Tashi and the Monk. She explained the project and gave me a brief history about the benevolent monk behind the project Jhamste. Jhamtse (jhaam’-tsay) is Tibetan for “love and compassion”, it is an international non-profit organization run by volunteers and sustained by individuals who participate in their programs. The film lay on my desk for a time but I kept thinking of completing my never-ending to do list before I was permitted to watch it! What I saw and what I witnessed was so heart-rending, so touching it literally blew me away. The 42-minute film has no elaborate camerawork, no superstar narrator, just an unpretentious story of Tashi and the monk, Lobsang Phuntsok. This left me even more curious and desperate to become involved with Tashi and Lobsang, because we have all met a Tashi in our lives. A chaotic, scorned and angry child due to no fault of their own and then it just takes one person to believe in this child and help this child and this can be life changing for them.
Lobsang only has room for 85 children at his school but he is bombarded with hundreds of requests from villagers begging him to take in more. But he just can’t, with limited capacity Lobsang has to make some life-altering decisions.
“Many people believe in compassion. Because it works.” Lobsang Phuntsok
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
Anthony Levene is the Director of AMATA SA with twenty years’ experience producing and directing TV commercials, corporate films, and through-the-line marketing and internal communications campaigns for leading international brands.
Operating in Switzerland and the UK, he works with a highly experienced and talented team to deliver two distinct services to clients worldwide: Production Services and Bespoke Communications.
Film production services in Switzerland range from TV commercials, web and corporate, to TV documentaries and feature films - at all levels of budget whether it be a shoot downtown or up the highest mountain peak.
Recently Anthony and his team fully serviced a complicated glacier shoot for Nike featuring two US Olympic athletes and they also ensured that the Oscar-winning director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, created a powerful Nike film featuring Roger Federer.
I caught up with him about his move to Switzerland from the UK, the trials and tribulations of being local and global. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
Seth Franklin Berkley, CEO of GAVI, is a medical epidemiologist by training and a global advocate on the power of vaccines. Seth has been featured on the cover of Newsweek and recognized by Wired Magazine as among "The Wired 25": a salute to dreamers, inventors, mavericks and leaders. Furthermore, TIME magazine mentions him as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2009. Seth Berkley joined the GAVI as CEO in August 2011, as it launched its five-year strategy to immunize a quarter of a billion children in the developing world with life-saving vaccines by 2015. Rarely have I seen such a powerful combination of passion, humility and drive..... It was a pleasure to talk to him.
How does Gavi work?
Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) is a public-private global health partnership committed to protecting children’s health by increasing access to immunization and strengthening health systems in the world’s poorest countries. As a public-private partnership, GAVI represents all the key stakeholders in global immunization: implementing and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, civil society, the vaccine industry and private companies.
“Our force is warranting that our collaboration is a win-win for all involved.”
