T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons. Best, like other Euronomads, measures his in Hewlett-Packard laptop batteries and Eurostar timetables. Unfettered movement of labor is one of the four freedoms of the European Union, but most Europeans choose not to use it. A 1997 Eurostat survey found that about 95 percent of Europe’s work force stayed in their own countries. When asked in a recent EU survey whether they’d like to work in another European country, 80 percent of French and Germans said no. Aside from unskilled laborers, those who say “yes” tend to be an elite breed. The new corporate gypsies may boast the traditional trappings of success–degrees from Oxbridge, Bocconi or Sciences Po, or a job in London’s City or Paris’ Bourse. They may be trilingual and well traveled–in this age of Study Abroad programs and cut-rate air-fares, many Europeans are. What sets members of this tribe apart is that they are firmly rooted in the transnational marketplace. As cultural translators, they can negotiate a deal in Palermo one day and St. Petersburg the next. Their caravansaries are hotels, airports and watering holes like the Bristol Hotel’s bar in Paris or Eclipse in London. Says Best: “More and more, international types are in demand. The frontiers are coming down, and businesses are desperately maneuvering for position.” The new nomads have found their niche not in a place, but in a time–a moment when everyone knows companies need to cross borders, but not everyone knows how to navigate the murky waters of cultural nuance. “Just thinking in terms of geographical mobility is passe,” says Kelly Richdale, a Russia-based businesswoman with British and South African passports. “You take it for granted. Now it’s about how you interface with people: that’s the ultimate form of mobility.”
When Europe was just a continent instead of a Union, thrusting young managers wanted postings at HQ, so as to hug the seat of power. These days, the savvy ones want to circle round it. “Ten years ago, mobility was a luxury,” says Helen M. Henderson, development director at INSEAD, a school that launches many of the transnational elite. “Today it’s a necessity, if you want to get on. The door just shuts if you’re a 35-year-old who’s never worked abroad.” Businesses want multinational, often global reach; but they can’t achieve it without a deep feel for each of the hundreds of localities where they hope to succeed. It’s a balance Dutch-born Mylene de St. Pierre strikes daily as an ad executive on Pan-European campaigns at TBWA in Paris. When she was working on the Absolut-vodka account, a Russian colleague panicked when the Swedes at Absolut didn’t decide quickly enough on whether they liked a particular layout. “He was like, ‘Call his boss! Make him decide!’ I told him, ‘Don’t worry. Swedes are very democratic. It takes time for them to make decisions. The man will get back to us’.” He did.
Many Euronomads started learning their multiculturalism in the cradle. Kelly Richdale, for example, says her entrepreneurial spirit derives from a childhood in Hong Kong and her respect for liberalism from years studying at Cambridge. The “intense guilt” of being born a white South African propelled her to Russia after college: “South Africa and Russia were parallel economic dead ends,” she notes. “I simply transferred my commitment to change society from South Africa to Russia.” She edited Russian Vogue, and started Prologue Productions, a TV company, with European Commission funding. She has a Russian husband, a horse, two dogs and a newly embraced faith: the Russian Orthodox Church. But she retains a global view: “I simply don’t think about borders anymore,” she says. “Mobility is just something that you take for granted.”
Richdale is taking 10 months to get an M.B.A. at INSEAD. On campus–a cluster of stark modernist buildings tucked into the forest of Fontainebleau outside Paris–Nokias bleat constantly. The Financial Times is available free in hallways, and the bookstore sells INSEAD fleeces and copies of “Golf and the Spirit.” In cubicles, students work in groups carefully chosen for maximum cultural diversity. French management consultants prepare business plans with Orthodox-Jewish Swiss bankers and British-Greek high fliers. Italian advertising types learn to cope with Asian study habits. In classes, cases are written to be as multicultural as possible. With the requirement of three languages for graduation from the intensive M.B.A. course, most students are committed to working abroad: 46 percent of last year’s graduating class found jobs in countries other than their own. “Sure, sometimes I think, ‘Gee, it would be nice to someday have a family, a country club, and to see the same group of people everyday,” says INSEAD student Patrick Mork, a Belgian who has worked for Pepsi. “But I’m on my ninth country now.”
Mobility can be addictive. Euronomads tend not to sit at home on vacations or even on weekends–they travel then, too, whether skiing in Verbier, sunning in the South of France or seeing friends in London. “E-mail helps nomads’ social lives,” says Cato Wille, a Norwegian working for Citibank in London. “You’ll send an e-mail saying, ‘Hey, I’m in Athens three weeks. Let’s have dinner’.” Love lives are complex, and the new class likes to swap tales of ever-more spectacularly arranged relationships. One example: he works in Moscow and New York. She works in London and stays with the child. He flies in for weekends. Nomads tend to attract other nomads. Philippe de Maillardoz, a Latin American-raised Swiss working in Barcelona, is a second-generation Nestle employee, so he knew well that “the deal with Nestle is to keep moving.” The only drawback to corporate nomadism, he found, was emotional. “You’re never sure what’s going to happen in three years, so you always refrain a bit,” he says. Bit by bit, companies are realizing that if mobility is going to be a lifestyle, they have to help out. “With competition for these high-level people growing, it’s no longer enough for companies to say, ‘Here’s a plane ticket and a couple extra grand’,” says Sarah Roe, of the London-based international-recruitment consultancy EMDS. “Companies now have to be dedicated to helping families and children move.” One international moving company is beginning to produce brochures for spouses and children, filling them in on everything from the weather in New Zealand to good schools in Rome. A whole industry is springing up to support elite gypsies. Regus Management Ltd., founded a year ago in Brussels, offers “instant offices” for transnational types, providing them with furnished, staffed offices in 43 countries. The London-based ten uk–the “ten” stands for “time-energy network”–handles domestic and foreign chores for its clients. Recent tasks: scoring World Cup tickets for a client who wanted to clinch a deal with a rugby-loving Frenchman, and changing the answering-machine message for a client who was traveling in Turkey when the earthquake struck, so that callers knew she was safe. They’ve overnighted swimming trunks and documents across Europe to clients–an invaluable service for Euronomads. “If there’s one thing you wake up screaming about in the middle of the night, it’s that you left your mobile-phone charger or computer in the wrong country,” says Best. If that’s your worst nightmare, then you must be doing pretty well.
