The Borderless Self: Yoli Chisholm on Building a Life Beyond Borders

Hello everyone, welcome back to Tell My Story, the podcast where we explore real-life stories, personal growth, career journey, challenges, and the lessons that shape our lives. I'm Henry Chiwetelu and today we are having a conversation about immigration, career development, global mobility, financial independence, and what it means to build a life beyond the borders we were born into. My guest is Yoli Chisholm, an award-winning professional with more than 20 years of executive experience across the corporate world. She has worked with organizations including Microsoft, eBay, Sprint, Lava Life, and Deriv, and has built her career across five countries and three continents. Yoli is also the editor-in-chief of Borderless, and author of Crushing Corporates, a TEDx speaker and keynote speaker who has shared her ideas on global mobility, career and the concept of the borderless self. But behind the career achievement is an even more powerful personal story. Yoli was born in Zambia to South African parents who oppose apartheid. She experienced life as a refugee, completed her early schooling in Kenya, and eventually immigrated to Canada with her family. Her journey raises some important questions. Can changing countries change the trajectory of your career, or does immigration shape identity? And can global mobility become a pathway towards greater opportunity and financial independence? Today, we're going to explore those questions through Yoli's personal story and professional experiences. Yoli, welcome to Tell My Story. It's a pleasure to have you here with us today.

Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here.

All right, Yoli, your story begins in Zambia with parents who opposed apartheid and eventually led your family to Canada as refugees. Can you take us back to that part of your story?

Yeah. So, you know, my father had been exiled from South Africa. So at that time, there was no way we could go back to South Africa. And so my parents, while they were part of the ANC and struggled to free South Africa, they were building a life. And so by the time we got to the period of time where we had been accepted by the Canadian government to emigrate to Canada, they had five kids. And they had been building a life in Kenya, but you can imagine a young couple, five kids, and they're trying to think about how are they going to educate all their kids, how they're going to give their kids a better life. And so... the decision was to try and apply to immigrate to Canada. And I remember the day my dad came home. He came home with this envelope with a letter that said we had been accepted. And in the envelope, they had included a map of Canada. And my dad spread the map on the dinner table and said, Basically, the Canadian government had said, okay, we've accepted you, now choose which city do you want to go to. And we knew nothing about Canada. We didn't know anything about the cities. And we remember going through all the city names. There were so many strange names like Yellowknife, Nunavut, Sudbury. And we didn't realize some of these areas were like up in the most coldest regions of Canada. But ultimately, we selected a city called London, Ontario. And it