From There To Here
Natalia Gomez · 46 min
A Colombian veterinarian who gave up her career, her health, and her comfort zone to rebuild her professional life from scratch in Australia — and now helps other overseas-trained vets do the same.
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Natalia Gomez arrived in Australia at 18 on a student visa and fell in love with the country. Back in Colombia, she had just finished her veterinary degree and started a small business, but something about her home culture didn't sit right with her. She saw machismo in the men around her, impossible beauty standards for women, and attitudes toward animals that troubled her. When she decided to stay in Australia permanently, she had to start from nothing.
For the first few years, Natalia worked pizza shops, coffee bars, cleaned Airbnbs, and eventually became an au pair. She kept applying for vet nursing jobs but got rejected repeatedly. After sending 77 resumes with only two callbacks, she almost gave up. Then she asked Dr. Ben, an Iranian immigrant vet who'd been through the same struggle, if she could volunteer one day a week. He said yes. That Monday volunteering position changed everything. Within six months of adding his name to her references, employers started calling.
Next came the Australian veterinary exam. While working full-time in emergency vet nursing, Natalia studied for months in a tiny apartment overlooking Bronte Beach, too locked into study mode to ever leave her desk. The intensity developed an autoimmune disease and weight gain, but she passed. Now she helps other overseas-trained vets navigate the same process through study courses she created with another Argentine vet. She's also adamant about one thing: migrants who stay only with people from their own culture, eating home food and speaking their home language, get trapped in a cycle where they never truly belong. Australia is home for her, no ambiguity. She wouldn't trade it for anything.
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