Frazer Williamson didn't plan to end up in global mobility.
He was a linguist, fluent French, passable German, a degree split between the University of Bath, Sciences Po in Paris, and Strasbourg, and a half-formed dream of becoming a European civil servant. That route didn't work out. Better things were ahead.
Instead, a rotation at Procter & Gamble landed him in an international HR team working on relocation & expatriate services for French-speaking markets. He found it genuinely interesting. And that accidental first step became a career that's taken him from London to Connecticut to Helsinki, relocating people, building strategic cross-border programs, and navigating the kind of cultural complexity that most people only read about.
He's joined Elva as our Founding Head of Global Mobility. This is his story, and a bit of what he's here to do.
The part people don't tell you about relocation
From Procter & Gamble to IBM, through ENI, and BGRS (Sirva) with travels globally, including Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Frazer has spent decades inside the mechanics of international mobility. The journey took him through seven years as a Director at BGRS running strategic global delivery programmes for clients’ across six time zones, and most recently to lead the Global Mobility programme implementation at AlphaSense. Over the course of his career, he's helped thousands of employees and their families relocate across borders.
What surprises people most when they're in the middle of it?
"You can't treat it as a transaction. You're dealing with human beings and their families, so there's a lot of sentiment around it, and behaviours that can impact success."
The practical side, visas, housing, cost-of-living analysis, assignment packages, is manageable if you know what you're doing. What's harder, and what companies consistently underinvest in, is the longer arc. Whether someone actually thrives once they've arrived. Whether their family settles. Whether a two or three year assignment ends up being something the person looks back on with pride, or something they quietly endured.
"A lot of companies don't invest in strategies to make that assignment successful. It's not just about getting to the location and starting work."
Why Elva
Frazer was looking for a chance to innovate, build, and disrupt. A former mentor once labelled him a “change agent”, someone who was keen to disrupt the norm and find more modern ways of doing the same things. Sometimes the constraints of the corporate machine, or a lack of investment in the right areas, didn't always make that easy.
When he looked at Elva, he saw something different: an ambitious team with the drive and the backing to actually change how this industry works, combined with a product that could make relocation genuinely less fragmented for the companies trying to run these programs.
"I saw a ton of amazing people who are ready to disrupt, and have the confidence, but also the structure, to make it a success."
What sealed it was the people. And the absence of fear. At Elva, a bespoke client package or a tailored product feature gets built in days, not months. In an industry known for moving slowly, that's genuinely rare.
What he actually does at Elva
Frazer's remit is part commercial development, part fractional program lead for clients who need someone to sit with them and map what they're actually doing, and what a modern version of it could look like.
He's particularly focused on companies at an inflection point: startups opening their first international entities, scaling companies beginning to hire across borders, and larger corporations that have been running the same mobility program for years and know it needs updating but haven't had the conversation yet.
"There are a lot of companies who've been doing this for years. Offering a modern, disruptive way of delivering the services is quite appealing, but they just haven't been able to have that discussion yet."
When companies announce expansions into new markets, the legal and finance hires tend to follow quickly. The people infrastructure, the frameworks that actually make international employees land well and stay, often comes later, if at all. That's usually where Frazer comes in.
Alongside direct client work, Frazer is building out Elva's presence through events and thought leadership, including industry focus groups across different markets. The goal is straightforward: be visible, be useful, and make it easy for people in the industry to start a conversation.
Reach out
If you're expanding into new markets, hiring internationally, or rethinking an ageing mobility program, Frazer would be happy to talk through what modern global mobility can look like.
He's on LinkedIn, he answers messages, and, in his words: "don't be afraid to pick up the phone." Outside work, he coaches kids' football on the weekends. He's used to people who don't yet know what they're capable of.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frazerwilliamson/