KatMpic.JPGName: Katherine MacGregor

Age: 36

Personal situation: Married with 2 kids under 5 – husband is English

Professional situation: Senior Advisor, International Science Partnerships, MBIE

Time away from NZ: 10 years in total (3+7) since 2005 but lived overseas through parents’ jobs growing up

Countries lived in: China & the UK, Singapore and USA (2x)

Time back in NZ: Most recently, 2 years though has come and gone a few times

Best part of return: The openness and vibrancy – New Zealand has really grown up

Worst part of return: Being far away from my support network of London friends and not having access to M&S ready meals…

Must share piece of advice: Be open to it, just embrace it. Not everything will be perfect. Give yourselves a two year window before you make any decisions. The first 6 months to a year will be tough but go with that.

Realise that no one will expect anything from you when you arrive so just be yourself and create your life as you go along. You don’t have to bring your old life with you. NZ isn’t a small UK, it’s NZ, it’s unique so just appreciate it for what it is.

Read the full story…

What made you decide to leave NZ?

I’ve actually left NZ three times since I was 20. I also grew up with living overseas as part of my Dad’s job but I consider most of that part of growing up and, my six months interning in the Washington DC when I was 20, as part of my education.

The second time moving abroad was when I had just finished my Master’s degree. I went for a job interview, which was disastrous, and made me realise that I just wasn’t ready for the workplace yet. I wanted to take a year off and have some fun so I went to student job search and saw an ad on the wall seeking people to teach in China for a year and that, turned out to be the beginning of everything.

What were you hoping to get out of your first overseas experience?

I remember saying to someone at the time that ‘all I want to do is see the world and take photos’ and that was what I wanted, to see the world, to have fun, to be a 22 year old. I always knew I wanted to do an OE and doing it this way meant I didn’t have to work and save up first, I could just go and be paid for it.

When my contract in China came up for renewal I decided I didn’t want to stay in China so I applied for a UK working holiday visa and went to London. I wasn’t ready to go back to NZ so I considered the US and Canada, but I’d already spent a lot of time in those places when I was a child, and the UK seemed like the next cool place to be. Plus, my best friends were already living in London so the decision seemed logical…

What made you decide to come back to NZ the first time?

Basically my UK working holiday visa ran out so I had to come back. I thought I was ready but I really wasn’t. I came back for 18 months and in that time my career was going really well but the rest of my life wasn’t adding up. I was doing the long distance thing with my new boyfriend who was from the UK and that was working fine but I was missing my London friends, Europe and being able to travel. So I applied for a Highly Skilled migrant visa and went back to the UK via 10 weeks backpacking around Central and South America.

What were you hoping to get out of your second time in the UK?

I wanted to pick up where I’d left off, having a great social life, travelling and experiencing everything London had to offer but two months after I arrived Lehman Brothers collapsed and so did all the jobs – I was lucky to find a job in Political Event Management but was made redundant nine months later. I got another job but was made redundant again two months after that. Then I did three months on minimum wage. This meant that first the first time, I faced the prospect of having genuinely no money which meant the fun factor was taken out of London for a while.

So, my priorities had to change and I knew I had to rein in the travelling which was hard because I was still really curious about life and wanting to see the world so, although my ability to pay for travel changed, my desire to travel didn’t.

But life went on. My boyfriend and I got engaged and decided that we would save for a house and only travel twice a year but we were still having a lot of fun. Eventually we bought a one bedroom flat in the East End and had a great time enjoying life in the twenty-something playground that is London.

What made you decide to come back to NZ?

Our one bed flat was great when it was just the two of us but we decided to have children. When we had our first child, it was still OK but, after I got pregnant with our second, we couldn’t see how to make it work in London. The wages in both the sector I work in and my husband’s profession hadn’t risen for ages and we couldn’t afford to upgrade our apartment so we started to think about leaving.

We looked into Australia but the sums wouldn’t add up so we decided to go to NZ based on the practicalities – affordability, visas, jobs, family. We also found that the Australian recruiters were quite discouraging citing a lack of local experience as a potential barrier whereas the NZ recruiters were really supportive and enabling. They gave great advice on how to present my CV, talked me through the differences in covering letters and were really open to Skype interviews.

NZ Immigration were also really great. We had a small hoop to jump through for my husband and NZ Immigration really helped us resolve that and made us feel really welcome.

How long did it take between making the decision to move and the actual move itself?

It was about a year. We had to sell our apartment, get visas and decide where to live. We quickly ruled out Auckland because of affordability. I knew I wanted to go back to Wellington and my husband was keen too. We have a good social network, with some friends from our China days, and I really love the Wellington vibe.

What were you expecting your return to NZ to be like?

My expectations were based on the first time I came back when I was really lonely and what I’d seen from my mum when we moved back to NZ when I was a child. I thought I was going to be miserable and we were worried about the impact our leaving might have on my husband’s family as well. So we weren’t really looking forward to it but it felt like the right, practical decision at the time.

What has it been like?

Awesome! Everyone here is so nice, so welcoming and so supportive. I felt like I kind of ‘fell into a net of people I didn’t know existed’. We even got some great advice from our landlords who had also moved back here from the UK. They were heading back but told us not to make any decisions about whether we want to stay for at least two years.

That advice has really helped us get through the peaks and troughs. If we’re having a rough time we just agree not to talk about it until we’ve been here two years so we can focus on just really being here.

My job has also been a big help. I walked in the first day to find that half the floor I work on is British or have recently returned from the UK which meant I fell into another accidental, weird support network of people who had no idea I was clinging to every word they had to say.

I also connected with someone I knew via the NZ Business Women’s Network I was part of in the UK. She had also recently returned so it was great to meet up for coffee and talk about our experience.

So all in all, I felt like we had a pretty soft landing. Of course there were challenges. We did feel like we’d been forced to come back in some ways and that it was a practical decision so that could be emotionally tough at times. Plus we were a couple with two young children and that would have been challenging anywhere in the world.

What have you found most surprising about the move?

How great it is here! How progressive. People used to say that NZ is like England in the 1950s but I think it’s England that’s like NZ in the 1990s, except for London of course. Wellington is amazing, so creative and innovative – it’s really taken flight. There is something new happening here all the time. I see it in my industry in particular and it’s inspiring to see how much Wellington has stepped into the 21st Century and is taking things forward.

How have your personal and professional situations changed in NZ?

Professionally I have a really cool job, but it isn’t perfect. I’m a full-time working mum so I do my 40 hours and then go home to do the second shift. I have a great boss who is really respectful of my time but sometimes I am answering emails while I’m cooking dinner, though I do try to put the work phone away by 6pm.

I feel like NZ has a really good attitude to work-life balance, it’s respected and encouraged and, in our organisation, it’s ‘enshrined in gold’. Senior management promotes the message that weekends are weekends and that we should spend time with our families in our time off.

My husband and I are both being paid more for the same work than we were in the UK and the experience of work, for me, is really enjoyable. I love the culture of being mega-productive during your 9-5, but I especially like the coffee/catch up meeting that is the norm in NZ workplaces.

Personally our lifestyle has changed a bit. We don’t go out for the three hour brunches we enjoyed in London. I do a lot more running than I did over there and am fitter than I’ve been in a long time. We are still urbanites at heart but enjoy being able to do what we enjoyed doing in London, but with nature all around.

Is there anything you wish you’d done differently?

We moved when the time was right for us. Our time in London had come to a natural end but I clung to my London life when I first arrived – particularly over Facebook and Whatsapp. In hindsight I should have made a cleaner break and let go of UK life sooner than I did. It probably took me a full year to realise that I needed to make some local girlfriends, people who I could relate to the way my life is right now, and embrace the local community where I live now.

In hindsight, we probably didn’t need to rush quite so much when we organised the move. We did the practicalities in three months but we could have taken six and that would have been fine too.

How do you feel now (today) about living in NZ?

I am still naturally inclined to look ahead and always open to moving abroad. We definitely consider Wellington our home base, where we want our kids to think of as home. We feel really happy here right now. It might not be forever but it’s working for us right now.

What were the best tips you received when making the move?

To get in touch with recruiters really early on. To have conversations in the UK with people who know people who have moved back to NZ and to follow up and connect with those people. This gives you a network to lean into when you arrive which is really important both professionally and personally.

What do you see unfolding in your future in relation to NZ?

This weekend is our two year anniversary so it’s an important milestone. We accidentally bought a house which we love and have no intention of moving back to the UK, especially after Brexit.

NZ is really stable and calm, we can do everything we want, get better pay and, we have owls on the roof at night. We definitely feel like Wellington is now our home base but we will probably move away again at some point. I’ve become a bit of China specialist in my role and my husband could also easily work there again so we definitely see a move to Asia in our future. We’re not actively pursuing this but are open to opportunities as they come up.

What’s your ‘must share’ advice for anyone contemplating a move back to NZ?

Be open to it, just embrace it. Not everything will be perfect. Give yourselves a two year window before you make any decisions. The first 6 months to a year will be tough but go with that.

Realise that no one will expect anything from you when you arrive so just be yourself and create your life as you go along. You don’t have to bring your old life with you. NZ isn’t a small UK, it’s NZ, it’s unique so just appreciate it for what it is.