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Dr. Joy Wiggins 

Meet Dr. Joy Wiggins, we chatted about Raising Kids to Boardroomsshe is a cultural agility expert, former professor, and single mum who packed up her life in Texas and moved to Lisbon, Portugal with her teenage daughter Ruby. She's spent decades living and working across cultures, from Germany to China to Jordan, she also now helps globally mobile women build careers and lives that don't fit neatly inside one country's borders.

What You'll Take Away:

• There's a world of difference between being culturally competent and culturally agile, one is going along to get along, the other is knowing yourself well enough to walk into any room, anywhere in the world, and read what's really happening beneath the surface
• Moving abroad as a single mum with a teenager is not for the faint-hearted, Joy shows us that when you take it one "next best step" at a time, and you keep the conversation honest with your kid, the adventure is absolutely worth the wobble
• The biggest blind spot Western women carry into cross-cultural spaces is mistaking their own confidence for competence.  Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do in a new culture is to stop talking, watch who speaks, and learn the unwritten rules before you try to rewrite them
• The women who thrive globally aren't the ones who hustle hardest — they're the ones who get strategic, build real solidarity with other women, and understand that sometimes opening a door just a crack is how you eventually walk through it fully

Connect with Dr. Joy Wiggins: 🌐 joywiggins.com 💼 LinkedIn: @DrJoyWiggins

If this episode stirred something in you, whether you're mid-move, mid-career, or mid-life or wondering what's coming next, please share it with a woman who needs to hear it today. And if you haven't already, subscribe to Nomadic Diaries wherever you listen. Your story belongs here.

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You can map the move. You cannot map the metamorphosis. Nomadic Diaries explores the interior journey of expat life — the belonging, the identity shifts, the repatriation, and everything that travels with you that can't be packed in a suitcase. This episode may be part of our Re-Entry Series (30 episodes on coming home) or The Belonging Project (29 episodes on belonging across cultures). Browse the full catalog at nomadicdiariespodcast.com and please share or leave a review if this episode resonated.