It was the Aussie sense of adventure that took journalist Prue Clarke to New York in 2000, it was the American dream that kept her there for 19 years. Like most expats, Prue’s story started with a plan to be away for ‘just a year’. But when her ‘just a year’ included studying at the prestigious Columbia University, reporting on September 11 and meeting her very own Mr Big, plans change. After two years in New York, and reflecting on her experience with September 11, Prue decided she wanted to report more on the world’s ‘why’ than its ‘what’. She took a six-month job in Ghana in Africa which started a six-year tenure reporting for US and global publications from the developing world and sowed the seeds for her non-profit organisation New Narratives that she still leads today. New Narratives supports news media in low- income countries of Africa and the Pacific to empower them to tell their own stories. New Narratives and journalism in Africa have remained constant in Prue’s life which has taken her from New York to London, back to New York and then home to Sydney in 2019, with an American husband and two internationally-born children in tow. Managing such a life Prue attributes to ‘America’s dream big’ mentality and the influence of a city like New York where everything feels possible. She is now living in a world now that feels very restricted and, in this podcast, ponders the opportunities and risks for Australians like herself trying to maintain global organisations and connections. After spending nearly two decades reporting on both Australian and global stories, Prue also reflects on the impact the departure of hundreds of thousands of Aussie expats from overseas roles back home will have on ‘brand Australia’ internationally.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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