Yvonne Quahe - Whose Career: Yours, Mine or Ours? Addressing the Dual Career Dilemma with CARE

First Published in Great Britain 2021 by Springtime Books

Copyright Yvonne Quahe

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ISBN: 978-1-9196133-2-1

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Permissions have been sought in regard to any copyrighted materials included in this book where possible and every attempt has been made to contact the copyright owners. Some names, locations and identifying features have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the people involved.

Praise forWhose Career Yours, Mine or Ours?

Yvonne Quahe has written an essential book for professional couples. Her insights will help you navigate challenging personal and professional questions, and make the decisions that are right for you and your family.

Dorie Clark

Duke and Columbia Business Professor

Top 50 Business Thinkers in the World Thinkers50

#1 Communication Coach in the World Marshall Goldsmith

Leading Global Coaches Awards
An expert in self-reinvention and helping others make changes
in their lives. The New York Times

An essential guide for everyone on an international dual-career journey, whether starting out or on your umpteenth move. Yvonne Quahe has walked this path herself and The CARE Code and real-life stories will help you work through the challenges and see a landscape of possibilities.

Kathleen van der Wilk-Carlton

Founder and Board Member, Permits Foundation

This book is a real gift to couples who want to think generatively, productively and deliberately about their future careers together. I read it in one sitting and drew inspiration from the case studies, the practical tools and most importantly, the lessons learnt by all the contributors along the way. My only regret the fact that this book wasnt available when I embarked on my own dual career!

Samantha Rockey
Co-founder and Director of Thompson Harrison Helping
Leaders Do What Matters Most.

Associate Fellow, SAID Business School, Oxford University

Yvonne Quahe provides unique insights into what couples should consider when assessing global career decisions. This book is a must- read for anyone who wants to learn how to pursue a successful global career and does not want to sacrifice a fulfilling personal life.

Dr. Andreas Kern
Associate Teaching Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy,
Georgetown University

Finally a book on the market that delivers straight talk about the very real challenges of the dual career couple. For those who are on the edge of a move abroad, she helps you avoid common pitfalls, preventing many a painful stumble. For globally mobile couples, she delivers heavy doses of preventative medicine and powerful reality checks, and encourages couples to align strategies for equal partnership. So BOTH partners are empowered to navigate into the future.

Sundae Schneider-Bean

www.sundaebean.com

Dual career couples. Dream jobs. Global locations. Complexities of best choice and right decision for the family. The book offers practical frameworks and insights to guide couples to solve these dual career dilemmas. A must-read for HR professionals of organizations who want to build resilient and supporting policies and embrace a multi- generational workforce. Peace at home is performance at work.

Negar Rafikian

Chair of the Board of Directors,
Association for Human Resources Management in International
Organizations

www.ahrmio.org

As a very young child, my commercial banking father was relocated to Asia for work. We all came along, of course. My mother was the quintessential stay-at-home wife, mother and author with a live-in housekeeper and babysitter. It was the 1970s when women werent expected to work. Today, we are attracted to like-minded brains and adventurers. Yvonne Quahe has carefully provided couples in the 2020s with the thinking, approach and behaviors we need if we are to create the rich professional and personal adventures we seek with our most significant other. A must-read.

Caroline Stokes

CEO, FORWARD
Author of Elephants Before Unicorns: Emotionally Intelligent
Strategies To Save Your Company

It was a pleasure to read Yvonnes personal story about how she and her husband tackled the many challenges of a Dual Career Couple. The case studies added substance and affirmation to a variety of suggested approaches to preserve careers and family life. This is a great read that should be required reading for couples considering a move!Craig B. Toedtman

Craig B. Toedtman

Founder & CEO, Resource Development Company, Inc.
www.rdcinc.com

One day you will tell your story of how youve overcome what you are going through now and it will become part of someone elses survival guide.
Ehraz Ahmed
Founder and CEO of Aspirehive

To Graham
My G.O.A.T.

Foreword

I first met Yvonne Quahe in Singapore where we were introduced by mutual friends. At the time, I was living in Yvonnes hometown as an expatriate and university lecturer and she was living in Washington DC (where she still lives) as a professional expatriate working for the World Bank. Our paths crossed because we are both passionate about the same field global dual-career families. Fast forward a few years and we have remained in touch on a regular basis, sometimes in person when Yvonne has been visiting home, but mostly on FaceTime and WhatsApp. Our conversations are frequently long and detailed, during which we share a lot of research and swap ideas. Yvonne has been a willing sounding board on many of my publications and studies as much as I have been hers for programs and projects she is rolling out for her organization. Our dialogue about dual careers has always (ALWAYS!) been honest and raw. We have each lived the life (for decades) and know deep within our souls that irreverence and anecdotes serve no one.

In this book, Yvonne speaks her truth not just for herself but (more importantly) for the many thousands of other dual-career expatriate spouses living around the world. This is a book about the hard reality of expatriate life for an accompanying partner who is following their spouse or partners career abroad. Without any doubt, it is a tough life. To outsiders, such a life might appear to be full of glamour and exoticness, and while there are moments of that to be sure, much of the dual-career expatriate life is an extremely challenging inner journey that most people around us dont see. It can be incredibly lonely, soul-destroying, humiliating, and even marriage-ending (which Yvonne and I have seen many times). It can also be life-changing, deeply affirming, spectacularly exciting and even career-enhancing. My research, coupled with Yvonnes decades of on-the-ground experience, attests that it is a roller-coaster ride not meant for the faint-hearted, on which many embark and few truly achieve a successful outcome. In the pages of this book, Yvonne takes the reader through all of it. Using case studies that reflect the real-life complexities that all dual-career expatriate couples face, we are exposed to the twists and turns of decision-making and how couples cope (and pivot) when jobs and careers turn out to be less satisfying than first hoped.