Eleven years ago, Andrea Clarke was living in the US and working in her dream job at one of the world’s largest aid agencies.

But then, she was fired.

"It was that moment where your stomach just — you feel like you’re going to throw up," she tells This Working Life.

Ms Clarke had never been fired before and felt as though her "whole world was coming undone".

On an employer-specific visa to work in the US, Ms Clarke says losing her job was a threat to her whole life and livelihood

"I knew that I probably had to leave the country and abandon the life that I had created there with an incredible network of people," Ms Clarke says.

Now the founder of Career CEO and the author of Future Fit, she looks back on the experience as a "catalyst for me to make some different decisions about my life".

In order to keep her visa valid, Ms Clarke had just 10 days to find another job — so she got cracking.

"I did a deal with myself to allow myself to cry all night, but at 8 o’clock in the morning the alarm was going off and it was game on."

This is what she learnt.

Source - Read More at: www.abc.net.au