I’ve spent much of my adult life living and working across borders. Born in Poland and later becoming an American, I built a 30-year career in international public health, working across Asia, Africa, Europe and the US.
Even after adapting to life in America, I felt drawn to something bigger: exploring the world, experiencing different cultures, and contributing to meaningful change.
That calling eventually led me to an international public health career and, in 1996, to Cambodia, where I moved with my husband. We were both there to support the rebuilding of Cambodia’s basic health system after the war.
What I thought would be one assignment became a life lived across continents, filled with deeply satisfying professional and personal experiences.
A life and career shaped across Asia, Africa, Europe and the US.
Over the next three decades, I lived and worked throughout Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa, serving as a public health professional, consultant, manager, wife, mother, expatriate, friend, mentor and lifelong learner. I worked with governments, NGOs and international organizations, building programs, leading teams and navigating life in cultures very different from my own.
From the outside, it looked like a successful and meaningful life. And in many ways, it was.
Chapter 2
When Success No Longer Answers the Question
I’ve changed countries, careers, roles and directions more times than I ever expected. Each move brought new opportunities and new challenges. Learning how to adapt, let go, start again and find my footing became part of who I am.
Along the way, I experienced many of the transitions that shape our lives:
moving countries and starting over;
building a career in unfamiliar environments;
raising a family abroad;
relationship change and divorce;
caring for loved ones;
redefining identity and purpose in midlife.
“I also experienced the more personal side of transition through my beloved rescue dog, Laska, adopted from a shelter in France and brought with me through Geneva, Cambodia and eventually Thailand. When she developed advanced heart disease, I cared for her through her final chapter. Her ashes now rest in a beautiful park in Bangkok, which I still visit regularly.”
Inga Oleksy
These experiences taught me something important:
Change is rarely comfortable, but it can be profoundly transformative.
Even when life looks successful from the outside, there can come a moment when something no longer feels quite right. Over the years, I found myself asking deeper questions:
Who am I now?
What do I want this next chapter to look like?
How do I move forward when the old roadmap no longer fits?
I discovered that starting over isn’t about becoming someone completely new. It’s about uncovering more of who you already are and deciding what you want to carry forward.
That experience ultimately led me to a new chapter. Rather than leave my past behind, I brought everything I had learned from my life and career into work that feels deeply meaningful to me: helping others navigate their own transitions and discover what might be possible next.
Chapter 3
Helping Others Navigate Their Next Chapter
It was through my own process of reflection and reinvention that I discovered the power of coaching. I became a certified Life Coach through MMS Worldwide Institute and Mindvalley, and continue to deepen my training in complementary approaches and modalities.
Today, I work with expatriate women and globally minded professionals who find themselves at a crossroads after a relocation, career change, divorce, empty nest, retirement, or simply the realization that the life that once fitted no longer quite does.
I help clients step back from the noise, understand what’s really going on beneath the surface, reconnect with their strengths and explore what they want their next chapter to look like.
My approach combines deep listening, thoughtful questions, practical frameworks and a healthy dose of curiosity, with a little humor when appropriate.
Because I’ve lived through reinvention myself, I know that transitioncan be uncomfortable, messy and sometimes even funny in hindsight.But it can also be the beginning of something surprisingly good.
