Leiden - Expat Centre Leiden has a new manager: Corine van der Ceelen. Corine has lived the last zeven years as an expat in Malaysia and India. An introduction:

I’m Corine van der Ceelen and I’d like to introduce myself as the Manager for the Expat Centre Leiden. I have a background in Human Resources in Dutch and internationally operating companies. The last 7 years my husband, children and I have lived abroad, in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and later Bangalore India. Though both countries were in Asia, these were completely different experiences. My children went to international schools.

Contrary to the image people might have of expat partners, I have always tried to find jobs and voluntary work within the limits of my residency permit at the time. In Kuala Lumpur this was involvement in the board of the Dutch school, De Bontekoe. This school tought Dutch to over a hundred children who attended international schools. I’m a big advocate for bilinguality and am glad my children got the chance to be fluent in both Dutch and English and speak some French as well.

In Bangalore I helped expats before, during and after their assignment for a large Dutch oil and gass company in close cooperation with the HR department. My team and I have answered numerous questions about living in Bangalore, schools, health care, regulations on how to bring a dog to India and even the best bakery in town.

And that is exactly what we will do at the Expat Centre Leiden. Answer your questions, help you to enroll in the Municipal Administration of the towns in the Leiden region, efficiently point you in the direction of the Immigration Services (IND), organise social events for expats, update you on what’s happening through website, newsletter, Facebook and much, much more. I know how important it is to make the international assignment succesfull for internationals, their families and the companies they work for. And I like to contribute to make that happen. Luckily the stakeholders of the Expat Centre Leiden feel the same.

And that’s why I love this job and would like to help foreighn EU and non-EU highly skilled workers, academic and research scientists, freelancers and foreign students who just finished their Masters.

So please come over to The Expat Centre, let me know what you need and I’ll try my very best to work it out with you. We’re located at the Tourist information Centre (‘VVV’), Stationsweg 26, Leiden. See you there!