Introduction
Cturtle (said “sea turtle”) is the world’s largest community of international student graduates and alumni focused on lifetime employment support and engagement back in home countries. Started by an Australian entrepreneur in Vietnam in 2016, the network has grown to over 400,000+ members across 20 countries.
It was in 2015 that Asia based, Australian entrepreneur Shane Dillon started learning about the global business of international education and the struggle international students face transitioning from education abroad to employment in home countries. At the time he was a regional insurance executive looking to recruit returning Asian international student graduates and alumni who had studied in Australia to their portfolio of insurance businesses across the region. Finding it difficult to connect with large numbers of these returnee international student graduates and alumni for this purpose he launched the Australian Alumni Job Network (AAJN) in Vietnam in May 2016. Within a month 5,000+ alumni had registered on this web- based platform and he was getting requests from fresh graduates and alumni returning to other countries across Asia for support and from alumni of universities in United Kingdom, USA, New Zealand and Canada.