ON THE MOVE

Liz McCarthy has spent her whole life on the move, which has taught her invaluable lessons about life, work and always moving forward.

- Eliza Bavin writes.

Liz McCarthy's path to becoming the chief executive of MLC Expand was one with many twists and turns.

Even her upbringing was anything but typical. The daughter of a chemical engineer, McCarthy had seen more of Australia before she hit her teenage years than most.

"I was born in Melbourne and shortly afterwards we moved to Sydney. When I was nine, we moved to Brisbane. We stayed there for a few years and then we came back to Sydney when I was around 12. So, we moved around a lot," McCarthy says.

McCarthy says when she was younger the constant moving bothered her, but as she grew up she realised how important it was to experience new cities and people, and decided that was something she wanted to instill in her kids as well.

"I can re-root very easily, it really helped me to be flexible but organised. I really wanted my kids to experience that as well," she says.

"We moved to Tokyo as a family and ended up staying there for around three years, and it was incredible, although it was very tricky. There is so much paperwork, it's not an easy place to move to.

"And it was difficult, at first, for the kids - moving them to a new country where they didn't speak the language, but in the end, they didn't want to leave Tokyo to come back."

At the time, McCarthy was working with Jetstar as head of customer care. In fact, she has held many roles that one might not think would lead to heading up MLC's Expand platform - but McCarthy did start her career in financial services.

She did stints at AMP and Westpac before climbing the ranks at Macquarie to become head of marketing.

She then spent more than six years with Jetstar, followed by two years with humm group and four years with OneTwo Home Loans.

"I spent 13 years away from financial services and Wrap platforms and was able to come back with a very different view of things," she says.