Professional Growth, Giving Back, and Staying Connected

By Lennert De Jong, Director of Operations, Gosselin Group and IAM-YP Chair

It would be easy to measure a year’s success by headcount at conferences or funds raised for charity. IAM-YP Chair Lennert De Jong prefers a different metric: whether the community is genuinely living up to its three pillars of professional development, philanthropy, and networking.

On the philanthropic front, the summer fundraiser for the Global Moving Foundation exceeded its mark, with Chiara Bagigalupi, Silvia Salamanca, and Melody Gimmel celebrated as winners of the Club World Cup betting event. More initiatives are planned for 2026. But it was the Annual Meeting in New York that crystallized what De Jong values most about the YP model:

“This year we moved all YP activities to the day before the conference,” he explains. “That gave everyone the chance to fully dedicate their time to networking and meeting fellow YPs.” An interactive improv session turned public-speaking development into genuine human connection when participants stepped outside their comfort zones, overcame anxiety around speaking up, and arrived at the main conference already energized. “Learning and networking,” De Jong notes, “are most powerful when they happen together.”

As AI accelerates, De Jong says he is more convinced than ever of the primacy of human connection. Clients may seem more demanding in the digital era, expecting real-time updates and frictionless service, but they still want to be guided by trusted professionals, not faceless algorithms. Looking to 2026, his theme for the community says it plainly: People, Purpose, Progress.

When an Industry Feels Like a Community

By Anu Dattani, Vice President, Universal Relocations Inc. and IAM-YP Vice Chair

New York City is Anu Dattani’s home, which made hosting the IAM Annual Meeting there feel personal in the best possible way. For Dattani, the event’s most memorable moment arrived without warning: a Young Professionals improv session that she admits she approached with mild skepticism.

“I didn’t know what to expect going in, but the laughter, creativity, and sheer fun of it broke the ice like nothing else could,” she says. “It wasn’t just about improv; it was a perfect reminder that connection and collaboration are at the heart of everything we do.”

Dattani also presented alongside colleagues Rachael Lyons and Georgia Angell on modern approaches to business development, covering referrals, technology, and marketing strategies. The room’s enthusiasm was palpable. Yet it was the hallway chats, impromptu debates in the Expo Hall, and connections formed over coffee that she carried home. “These moments, big and small, are what make IAM conferences feel like a community rather than just an event.” San Diego, she says, cannot come soon enough.

Modern Mobility Starts with Rewriting How We Work

By Charlotte Cambriel, Global Relocation & Partnerships Manage, Alizes Demenagements Internationaux

Charlotte Cambriel is well aware of the industry’s inherent complexity. When she joined international moving, she was captivated by the surgical coordination of pickups, port logistics, sea-freight cycles, and customs documentation. “It felt like entering a global nervous system,” she writes, “where a missing form, a local tax rule, or a delayed vessel reshapes an entire schedule.”

What troubles her is the gap between that sophistication and the industry’s legacy habits. Paper-first workflows persist. Wooden packing crates remain over-used. Tracking visibility is inconsistent. “Parts of our industry still operate like a previous era,” she observes, a frustration sharpened by the fact that the expertise exists; it simply hasn’t been given modern tools to shine through.

Cambriel’s vision is concrete: smarter, standardized documentation; modern tracking platforms that turn data into real-time visibility; transparent local-cost breakdowns; and sustainability standards built around responsible shipment grouping, reduced wood usage, and greener operations. She is equally urgent about the human side. At Alizes, she sees drawing young French talent into operational roles like movers, drivers, and customs coordinators as a duty, not a nice-to-have. The industry moves the world, she argues. It deserves the workforce to move it further and faster.

Adapt Today, Lead Tomorrow

By Anna Maria Tavanli, Client Relations Manager, Safeway Transport

Anna Maria Tavanli opens with a provocation: gone are the days when moving was defined only by trucks, packing materials, and logistics instincts. For young professionals entering the field at Safeway Transport, a company serving Greece’s mainland and its notoriously complex island geography, tech fluency is not optional. It is the new foundation of efficiency.

Tavanli ticks through the forces reshaping the field: automated customs systems, AI-enhanced planning, virtual surveys, route optimization, tightening environmental regulations, and shifting geopolitical pressures on shipping lanes. Greece’s island geography compounds every one of these challenges. Ferry schedules, weather patterns, smaller ports, seasonal population spikes, and infrastructure limitations demand creativity and adaptability that professionals in more forgiving geographies rarely develop. “Safeway Transport’s ongoing goal,” she writes, “is to turn what seems like a challenge into a competitive advantage.”

Her conclusion is quietly emphatic: the moving sector’s future is dynamic, international, and innovation-driven. Young professionals who adapt now won’t just keep up; they’ll be the ones guiding it.

Bridging Borders with Tech & Trust

By Silvia Salamanca, Sr. Marketing Specialist, Enterprise Database Corporation (EDC)

In a global industry built on relationships, Silvia Salamanca asks a question many professionals overlook: what happens when the challenge isn’t just how people communicate, but how their systems do?

Her answer is that technology, done right, is itself a form of cultural intelligence. Real-time data exchange that allows systems to “speak the same language” instantly and across time zones doesn’t depersonalize the industry; it frees professionals from transactional friction, creating space for the deeper, trust-based relationships that actually differentiate a great moving company.

Having worked four years at a fully remote, globally distributed company, Salamanca has tested her ideas in the real world. Her practical tips for working across time zones and cultures are worth sharing in full:

1. Respect the clock. Mindfulness of local working hours is a form of respect, not an inconvenience.

2. Acknowledge others’ time zones when setting meetings or sending messages. This signals awareness beyond your own bubble.

3. Stay flexible. A quick on-the-go update within a colleague’s working hours can go a long way.

4. Embrace asynchronous communication. Clear written updates trust the team to stay aligned without real-time hand-holding.

5. Learn about others’ cultures, including holidays, food, and traditions, as a genuine way to build rapport.

“Tech can open doors,” she concludes, “but people still walk through them.” The combination of well-integrated systems and genuine cultural curiosity, she argues, is what real cross-border leadership looks like today.

Streamlining the Invisible Architecture

By Muhammad Basil, Head of Pricing and Data, Utrade Express LLC; Lasse Hansen, Key Account Manager, A/S MOVE IT; and Rishab Dattani, Customer Success Specialist, Netensity Corp. / Movegistics

Three contributors converge on a single insight from different angles: the industry’s greatest untapped opportunity lies not in the shipments themselves but in the systems around them.

Muhammad Basil was struck, on entering logistics, by “the scale of interconnected operations across countries and the sector’s ever-evolving nature.” His response has been concrete: last year, Utrade Express launched a tariff system in Canada and the USA alongside UTrade Express, a one-window solution portal designed to be accessible and user-friendly for everyone; not just logistics insiders.

Lasse Hansen at A/S MOVE IT names customs procedures as the single biggest friction point, and calls for digital customs platforms that make documentation more agile across borders: a goal shared by nearly every contributor to this issue.

Rishab Dattani at Movegistics frames the problem in human terms: companies still manage leads, crews, and jobs without unified systems. Modern tools and automation, he argues, should give moving companies the visibility, efficiency, and consistency they need to turn every customer experience into long-term success, not replace the people delivering that experience.

The Rise of Lifestyle Relocations

By Madlen Kotruts, Overseas Coordinator, Meldrum International

Not all disruption arrives via technology. Madlen Kotruts identifies a market shift that is quietly reshaping demand: the rise of lifestyle relocations.

What was once a corporate-assignment-driven market is increasingly shaped by individuals choosing to move internationally for personal reasons like lower cost of living, remote-work flexibility, tax advantages, warmer climates, and a better quality of life overall. These clients don’t look like traditional corporate transferees. They ship smaller volumes, prioritize sentimental items, and expect flexible, affordable options rather than full-household corporate packages.

For Kotruts, this represents a fresh opportunity for young professionals willing to meet clients where they are. Services like groupage and part-load options are becoming essential because they make international moving affordable and adaptable. Companies that offer flexibility, creativity, and a personalized touch, she argues, will be the ones who succeed in this evolving market, while those locked into corporate-only models risk being left behind.

What Moving Requires: An Industry Self-Portrait

By Ernesto Colom, Managing Director, Santa Fe Relocation, Houston, and Nathan Nhan Tran, Director, FCL Business Development & Operations, USA, Shipco Transport Inc.

Asked what surprised them most on entering the industry, Ernesto Colom and Nathan Nhan Tran offer two different windows onto the same landscape.

Colom found “a unique blend of logistics, compliance, and human emotion. An environment where no two days look the same.” His ambition is for the industry to evolve faster: adopting technology, building new models, forging stronger partnerships, so that relocation becomes seamless and empowering rather than stressful and opaque.

Tran, thirteen years into his career at Shipco Transport, was struck by the sheer complexity of the supply chain, where freight forwarders, packers, customs brokers, carriers, and truckers are all subject to strict multi-agency regulation. His target for improvement? Communication and transparency. “Poor communication has left both customers and service providers frustrated far too often,” he says. In an industry buffeted by economic shifts, geopolitics, and regulation changes, proactively sharing information isn’t just good service; it’s how trust is built and partnerships are made durable.

Reading the Room: Cultural Intelligence in Action

By Swapnaja Rasam, Associate Director, Tippet Richardson

Swapnaja Rasam entered global mobility believing the job was primarily about structure: paperwork, timelines, customs. Experience taught her otherwise. The real success of a move, she has come to understand, depends on how well you read the people in front of you.

Two moments stand out. The first involved coordinating a move for a diplomatic family relocating from India to Canada. Their home temple required specific handling; not removing shoes while working elsewhere in the house, but removing them when handling the temple itself. “It wasn’t written anywhere in a manual,” she says. “But I made sure the team understood why it mattered. That small act of respect built instant trust.”

The second was a client in South Africa who needed to talk through everything. Every question came with a story. Rasam caught herself slipping into checklist mode, paused, and realized the client wasn’t just seeking answers; they were building a relationship. She matched their pace. “The entire dynamic changed. That move went well not just because the logistics were handled, it went well because we listened and made them feel seen.”

At Tippet Richardson, handling government, embassy, corporate, and personal relocations, Rasam encounters a new culture and a new story with every shipment. “This industry moves fast,” she writes. “But cultural intelligence forces us to slow down, pay attention, and build genuine connections. That’s how a task becomes a relationship and a move becomes a moment of real care.”

Lessons from a One-Week Exchange

By Anabelle Laffitte, Commercial Manager, Canal Movers & Logistics Corp.

In October 2024, Anabelle Laffitte spent one week embedded at Hilldrup in Virginia through LACMA Next; her first time immersing herself in a workplace abroad. The brevity of the exchange, she found, sharpened rather than diluted its impact.

What resonated most was witnessing a large-scale family business that had grown significantly without sacrificing its close-knit culture. As Commercial Manager of Canal Movers & Logistics, a family business in Panama, she saw in Hilldrup a proof of concept: growth and culture are not mutually exclusive. “A people-centred approach,” she notes, “can scale successfully across borders.”

The technological lessons were equally concrete. Hilldrup’s use of technology for pre-move surveys increased accuracy, reduced paper usage, and improved cross-departmental efficiency. Laffitte felt prompted to begin adopting similar tools at Canal Movers on her return. Beyond systems, though, the exchange reinforced a quieter truth: “Cultural intelligence isn’t built overnight; it’s developed through small, consistent interactions. From casual hallway conversations to one-on-one meetings, everyday moments shape company culture.”

A Final Word

Read together, these accounts resist easy summary. They are written by people working in wildly diverse regions, each navigating their own version of regulations, workflow, and urgency. What unites them is their shared orientation toward curiosity, improvement, and the belief that how we move people and goods around the world is worth doing better.

The moving industry represents the infrastructure of human aspiration. It’s the mechanism by which people cross borders, pursue opportunities, and build new lives. The young professionals in these pages carry that aspiration in their hearts. They are not waiting to inherit an industry. They are already reshaping it. The future of moving is in good hands.