![\"Caroline](\"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/12\/Caroline_Moran.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\nMany participants in the program traveled to parts of the world where they had never been before. Nate Sarmento, senior community manager at two buildings in New York, headed off to Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve travelled quite a bit, but this is the farthest I’ve ever come\u2014and my first time south of the equator,\u201d says Sarmento, \u201cI’ve wanted to visit Australia for years. I’ve also secretly thought I’d be one of those people to finagle a way to stay Down Under, though now I’m too excited with my current situation in New York to leave it behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma Osborn, community lead at New York\u2019s WeWork NoMad, chose to travel to South Korea for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Asian cultures and language, but I have never been,\u201d says Osborn. \u201cI thought this would be an eye-opening experience personally and professionally. There’s so much to do and see\u2014definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Emily Pakulski, a community lead based in Washington, D.C., says she wanted to spend more time in a city that she loves.<\/p>\n \u201cI studied abroad in London during my junior year of college,\u201d says Pakulski. \u201cI fell in love with the city and its people, so I leaped at the opportunity to go back.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though she knows the culture well, Pakulski says there were one or two things that didn\u2019t translate.<\/p>\n \u201cI was covering the WeWork Waterhouse Square front desk and a member came in asking for \u2018parcels,\u2019\u201d says Pakulski, not realizing that he meant packages.. \u201cMy colleague and I thought she was referring to her company name, so we spent an awkward few minutes in the mailroom looking for a company that didn’t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Not everyone traveled so far. When community associate Julia Detweiler was told that she could work from just about anywhere around the world, she chose to stay in the same timezone.<\/p>\n \u201cI jumped at the opportunity to go to Seattle,\u201d says Detweiler, who is based at WeWork Valley Towers in San Jose. That\u2019s because her sister Elly Irby, who recommended that she join the company, works there as a community manager at WeWork South Lake Union.<\/p>\n Detweiler staffed the front desk, stepping in for another employee who had traveled to Seoul, South Korea. Irby says working with her sister was an amazing experience.<\/p>\n \u201cI was beyond thrilled when I found out Julia would be coming to Seattle,\u201d says Irby. \u201cIt was the second time I sent an all-caps message to my team exclaiming my excitement. The first was when she accepted an offer with WeWork.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Shawn Lee, a community lead at WeWork Euljiro in Seoul, says he traveled to New York to get a look at where WeWork was founded in 2010. He says the experience has been inspirational.<\/p>\n \u201cThis program really makes the vision of WeWork clear,\u201d says Lee. \u201cWherever we go, we WeWork employees can feel that we are all connected to each other. We learn from each other in a different market with different members and this can make our community stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n Ugo Mbawuike, community manager at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, says traveling to another country makes him proud to be a part of WeWork.<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing the magnitude of WeWork across the globe is extremely inspirational,\u201d says Mbawuike. \u201cI get to see how authentic our teams are to their own cultures, while still fusing the WeWork brand into the buildings. At the end of the day, who the heck wouldn’t be grateful and work harder everyday to see what was once a small startup expand to every major city on the planet!\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Exchange program Is an ‘eye-opening experience personally and professionally’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1715,"featured_media":213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43903,43912],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-stories","category-employee-spotlight"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Nate](\"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/12\/Nate_Sarmento.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n![\"Elly](\"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/12\/Elly_Irby_and_Julia_Detweiler.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n![\"Ugo](\"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/12\/Ugo_Mbawuike.jpg\")
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