LiftOff: Monica Tran and Malaysia
Today marks Monica’s last day in the Orion New York office before she heads off to Orion Malaysia to begin a year-long stint in that office as a participant in LiftOff. Monica sat down to discuss this opportunity and why she has always wanted to work in Southeast Asia.
When [Liftoff] the mobility program was being created the immediate opportunities were in Detroit, Boston, San Francisco and I raised my hand with the hopes that it could lead to a global relocation.
A few weeks later, I attended a Women’s Impact event [run by Cadreon and MAGNA] and Brian [McMahon] was on the panel. Brian said, and he says this often, that family is your work and your job should be your hobby. That day, he was walking by and we started talking about the great presentation and I said if there are any opportunities in Southeast Asia, in any of our offices, work would be a true hobby for me.
It’s something I’ve always thought about and he was like, ‘Great, you can talk to Greg [Walsh].’ And Greg was like, ‘Great, our Malaysia office is the biggest APAC office. We can get you in touch with the CEO of the Malaysia Mediabrands office and our Managing Director, at the time, for Orion.’ I got to meet them when they came here for our global summit in November.
And the rest is history. We came back from holiday break and Greg asked if I wanted to go for a week to Malaysia to see the office. I went in February and we met with the leads from UM and Initiative and had one-on-one meetings. They’re very brilliant there, very aggressive and very smart. I feel like I’m going to learn so much from them and you can also see where work needs to be done.
After the trip that’s when the paperwork started in terms of getting my assignment letter, figuring out the details, starting to transition off my current team and finding someone to fill my role.
I’ve been at Orion for five years now and this feels like such a natural next step. I now have a deep understanding of Orion and how we work across all aspects. I’m excited to see what I can do to help grow Orion in the Malaysian market. But, also learning and understanding a new market and new people and how they work there and a new culture; I’m excited for all of that fun stuff, too.
I wanted to live in Southeast Asia since I travelled there for my first two summers of college. I spent three months in Vietnam and Thailand each summer teaching English and just fell in love with the people. I made lifelong friends. I wanted to go end world-hunger, there. But, I also knew I wanted to have a career — I’m very career-oriented, too. Back when I was 18, I was like, ‘I want a job that involves travel and will let me go back.’
I have to give so much credit to the leadership team for hearing me out. I, for one, felt supported enough to go to Brian with this request without feeling like I was going to be shut down. He could have just smiled and nodded and that would have been fine. But, the fact that he led me to Greg who also took it very seriously and Greg took it along and made it happen, I could not be more grateful.
