You’re tired of the same-old, same-old in your job. Sure, you may be making a lot of money on Wall Street as a stockbroker but am feeling strangely unfulfilled. Maybe you’d like to do something different. If so, here’s a website you can check out – Escape the City (www.escapethecity.org).
Initially launched in London by Dom Jackson and Rob Symington (both 28), Escape the City is a community that connects corporate professionals with information, people, and opportunities to help them find exciting alternatives to their corporate jobs. Past “escapes” included managing a beach lodge in Mozambique, trekking across the Gobi desert, running a post office in Antarctica, or even clearing land mines in Cambodia. More fun that watching icons on your computer screens squiggle, for sure. The site, which currently has over 55,000 professionals looking to do something different, also aims to help people start businesses and ‘go on big adventures’.
“Corporate professionals have a strong base of skills, training and experience that can often be immediately applied to roles in other more unconventional, entrepreneurial and exciting sectors,” explains Escape the City co-founder Dom Jackson.
Escape the City recently expanded to New York in the United States to cater for the huge demand coming out of Wall Street. “It was a no-brainer to start in New York,” says Mike Howe, Escape the City‘s lead in the United States. ” There are so many unhappy people working in corporate jobs here and it was also a case of us wanting to start it before someone else copied our London website.”
Howe himself was an ex-Merrill Lynch employee who survived the recession but decided to quit his own lucrative banking job to work on something he believes in. “In my time in banking I saw four different CEOs pass through the company, all of whom made the same empty promises about stability and growth in both the company and the economy,” he explains. “Ultimately I lost trust in the whole financial system.”
If you’re feeling similarly unfulfilled and looking for an exciting next phase in your life, check Escape the City out.
Perhaps they could expand to Singapore next.
