How to navigate Australia with confidence

Workshop Overview

Moving to a new country often changes more than our address. It changes how capable, confident and understood we feel.

In this interactive workshop, Julia Taragano introduces the Institutional Fluency Framework, a practical model designed to help migrants understand why navigating unfamiliar systems can feel overwhelming, even when they are highly capable.

Through guided reflection, practical exercises and real-life examples, participants will explore how systems, communication and identity shape adaptation, and how to rebuild clarity and confidence in a new environment. 

Participants will leave with practical tools and a deeper understanding of what it truly means to move from outsider to insider.

Workshop Agenda

1. Welcome and Opening Reflection (15 mins)

2. The Institutional Fluency Framework (20 mins)

3. System Decoding (25 mins)

4. Invisible Rules Mapping (20 mins)

5. Confidence Timeline (25 mins)

6. Closing Reflection and Q&A (15 mins)

Key Takeaways for Participants

• Feel more understood in their migration experience

• Gain language for experiences they may have struggled to explain

• Leave with practical tools to navigate systems with greater clarity, confidence and

the ability to take action.

About the Facilitator

Julia Taragano works at the intersection of institutional navigation, cultural adaptation and

migrant experience. She first arrived in Australia as an international student in 2009 and has spent the past 17 years navigating and engaging with Australian systems across different life stages, both personally and professionally. Alongside professional experience in international education, operations and stakeholder engagement, she brings both lived experience and systems expertise to this work. 

She developed the Institutional Fluency Framework to help migrants recognise that many adaptation challenges are not a reflection of personal capability, but of the complexity of navigating unfamiliar systems.Her work focuses on helping migrants move from confusion and self-doubt towards clarity, confidence and agency.

About ALAYP:

The Australian Latin American Young Professionals Inc. (ALAYP) is a registered not-for-profit organisation aimed at fostering networks among Latin American and Australian qualified individuals to optimise career progression, generate work opportunities and serve as platform for entrepreneurship and business development.

ALAYP welcomes all Latin American professionals, entrepreneurs, business owners and postgraduate students and academics living in Australia and their Australian counterparts with a background or interest in Latin America to build meaningful relationships for collaboration and business/entrepreneurship opportunities. ALAYP's networking events are attended by government authorities, university officials, top businesses executives, international companies, and cross-region entrepreneurs.