Individual Career Coaching

You're not starting over. You're translating.

If you're a globally trained professional working in the U.S., looking for a job, or planning a relocation, you might feel like something's constantly getting lost in translation.

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If you're a globally trained professional working in the U.S., looking for a job, or planning a relocation, you might feel like something's constantly getting lost in translation.

Not just in English… but in the culture. The unspoken norms that everyone else seems to know. The unwritten rules of what it takes to build a successful career in the U.S. And yes, the networks that create opportunities for some, and completely shut out others.

Maybe you're making it to the interview stage, and you think it goes well, but someone else always gets the position.

Maybe you're currently in a role that you're overqualified for, wondering what it will take to get to your dream job.

Maybe you've been passed over for a promotion you deserved, and when you try to figure out why, there's no clear answer.

Maybe you're feeling like you're not enough:

Maybe you're self-conscious of your accent (or you work very hard to hide it.)

Maybe you've faced quiet discrimination that you can't prove, or offhand comments that hurt.

All you want is to be seen. To belong. Fully.

All you want is what you came here for: a career that reflects your talents and potential. Work that challenges you and rewards you. The ability to provide for your family, build something stable, and stop just surviving.

To walk into a room and be recognized for what you actually bring, not diminished by where you're from or how you sound.

To belong. Fully. Not in spite of where you came from, but because of everything it took to get here.

That life is not out of reach. And the gap between where you are and where you want to be is more specific and more closeable than you think.

But there's one piece most people are missing — and it's completely fixable.

MY WORST FEAR

"Oh, Deborah, you have an accent when you talk."

I'll never forget the moment on the 3rd grade field trip when my teacher said this to me.

It was my worst fear realized.

I was born in the US and then my family moved back to Korea for five years.

My dad, who wanted to make sure I'd be okay when we eventually returned to the U.S., bought me an English language curriculum on cassette tape. Every day, I'd sit and listen, turning the page every time I heard the little ding. I learned textbook English. Grammatically correct, dictionary-precise English.

And then we moved back to America.

I was so afraid of making a mistake that I didn't speak in public for an entire year. My parents wrote out phrases on index cards — May I use the restroom? I'm hungry — so I could point to what I needed without having to say a word.

It took about a year before I started to talk again, and then to hear that "I had an accent" — well, it just made me feel like I wasn't enough. I didn't really fit in.

It wasn't just the accent. It was understanding the nuances of English, the slang, the things the cassette tapes didn't teach me.

And I watched my father, with decades of experience in his field, lose his job in the recession of 2008, and fall into depression as he worked jobs that he was overqualified for just to pay the bills. How hard he worked on his pronunciation at home until my brother and I begged him to stop. The discrimination he faced for his age, his race. Seeing him go through that made me realize that I wanted to study clinical psychology.

My Lived Experience. My Passion. My Mission.

Hi, I'm Dr. Deborah Bogert. I have a PhD in educational psychology and I'm a Senior Professional Career Coach.

I wanted to understand how people grow, how they develop, how they come into their own.

And when I started getting involved with international graduate student communities, helping them figure out taxes, navigate the U.S. job market, and translate their education, experience, and expertise into career opportunities that reflected their full value…

I knew that this was the work that I was preparing for my entire life.

When I was a little girl, a teacher asked me to bring my lunch tray to "the window." I had no idea what she meant because in my textbook, a window was a glass pane in a wall. I stood there, confused, too afraid to ask in front of everyone. Eventually, in frustration, I walked into the hallway and put the tray next to an actual window.

And when she showed me the hole in the wall that was the "window" I remember thinking: this is a window? How was I supposed to know that?

Translation. Context. You're doing everything you know how to do. You're following the rules as you understand them. And the feedback you're getting makes no sense, because nobody told you that the word means something different here.

Once you know that — once someone shows you the slot in the wall — everything changes.

HERE'S HOW IT WORKS

1

Understand the full picture.

The first thing we'll do together is talk about your goals, your story, your credentials, and where the gaps might be. Then we'll review your resume, your LinkedIn, your cover letters, your job search approach, the kinds of roles you're targeting and whether they're actually the right fit.

2

Translate your experience into language that opens doors.

Your credentials aren't the problem. The way they're being communicated might be. We reposition your resume so it doesn't get filtered out before a human ever sees it. We rebuild your LinkedIn so it reflects who you actually are, in language that resonates with U.S. hiring managers. And we develop your experience translation framework — a way of talking about what you've done and how you've done it that crosses the cultural gap cleanly.

3

Build the strategy that gets you seen.

Getting into the pool isn't enough. You need to stand out. We identify the roles and industries that are the right fit, build your standout strategy, and develop the network connections that actually matter. You'll understand how U.S. professional networking works — and how to do it in a way that feels like you, not a role you're playing.

4

Prepare you for the room.

Making it to the interview stage is exciting…and nervewracking. Which is why we'll prepare (and rehearse) how it's going to go so that you avoid any pitfalls, misunderstandings, or cultural gaps that may distract from your real and true qualifications.

5

Navigate what comes next.

Getting the job is not the finish line. The first 90 days are where the culture gap shows up most clearly — in meetings, in relationships, in how you're being perceived by the team. And when you're ready to ask for more — a raise, a promotion, a bigger role — we prepare you for that conversation too.