Fluent on Paper, Stuck in the Room
A few weeks ago I was scrolling through LinkedIn and came across a post that stopped me. Not because it said something new but because someone had written down something I say to engineers every single week, almost word for word. The only…
The Austrian Oak: What Arnold Schwarzenegger Can Teach You About Learning English
Before Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Terminator, he was an Austrian immigrant. People mocked his accent, his body, and his ambition. In this quick chalk talk, Olivia breaks down three lessons from his story. Each one applies directly to learning…
How Technical Translators Work: The Unsung Heroes of Engineering
Clients ask Olivia to translate their documents all the time — a tender spec, a contract, a manual. She always says no. Not because she won’t help, but because teaching English and translating are two different jobs, with two different kinds of…
Authentically Aussie: How Engineers Get Hired in Australia
Thinking about moving to Australia as an engineer? The timing might be better than you think. Australia is short on engineers right now, especially in regional areas, and employers are actively looking. But getting the job is about more than your…
Writing Work Emails in English (Without the Panic)
You can hold a technical conversation, defend your work in a meeting, and handle the hard parts of your job in a second language. And then a blank email opens, the cursor blinks, and a two-minute task turns into twenty. If that’s the thing that…
All Your Ducks in a Row: Language Barriers & Home Buying Abroad
Highly educated, highly capable professionals still freeze up mid-sentence in a foreign language. That’s the starting point for this episode with Candice Lee — realtor, relocation specialist, and my friend of almost 20 years — who’s spent over a…
Clear Is Kind: A Crossover Episode with Aimee Arsenault
Engineers are trained to communicate in steps. Step 1, step 2, step 3. Read the diagram, follow the procedure, done. But the moment a project manager asks you to cut a 4-hour safety orientation down to 20 minutes, or a client asks you to sign off…
Vienna Waits for You: Reinventing an Engineering Career
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Andrea Zimmerl, a fellow Viennese and a fellow engineer, who made one of the boldest career changes an engineer can make: she went from plastics engineering to communication coaching, life…
Junk the Jargon: Why Engineering Jargon Isn’t Clear
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Becky Paroz, a 30-year veteran of the Australian construction industry, engineer, project manager, and quality assurance specialist, to talk about why industry jargon might be costing your…
007: License to Talk
In this episode of English for Engineers, I share why I started this podcast in the first place, then walk through five practical, no-fuss ways to master technical English as a working engineer. What You’ll Learn in This Episode Why does listening…
Why Logic Alone Can’t Hold Your Team Together
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Catherine Stagg-Macey, executive coach, team coach, and founder of Conversations at the Edge, to talk about the one skill that keeps international engineering teams from falling apart:…
Let the Drawings Speak: How Engineering Culture Changes Across Borders
In this episode of English for Engineers, I catch up with an old schoolmate, Christian Urich, a civil and environmental engineer now based in Melbourne, Australia, about how engineering culture changes once you cross a border — from the…
Lost in Translation: How Culture Shapes Business Communication
You can have perfect grammar and still get completely misread. That’s the whole premise of these two episodes — one long conversation with Ama Zbarcea, split in half because there was too much good stuff to cut. Ama is a legal expert, a polyglot,…
Technical English vs Business English
What I Mean by “English for Engineers” In this episode of English for Engineers, I take on three terms that get thrown around constantly: Business English, Simplified Technical English, and Technical English, and explain why none of them, on their…
Well, Hello There, Engineers
In the first episode of the English for Engineers podcast, Olivia introduces herself and explains why a civil engineer ended up building a business around language. She also shares four ways to work on your English starting tonight, no course…