I worked a year and a half as a manager abroad, but changed companies. Does it carry over or reset?

It does not reset. Changing companies does not, by itself, erase the managerial experience you already built abroad. In the EB-1, what is evaluated is the substance of your leadership role throughout your career, not whether it all happened under the same employer. Time as a manager can be read cumulatively, as long as it is well documented.

What supports that reading is the documentation from each period, showing that the duties were genuinely managerial:

• Job descriptions and the level of authority and decision-making at each company.
• Reports, org charts, and letters confirming responsibilities and results.
• Continuity of the managerial nature of your duties, even across the change of employer.

The company change matters less than the coherence of the overall picture: if you exercised leadership compatible with the sought profile at both companies, the periods tend to add up in the analysis. Since qualifying time and the exact criteria are defined by the authority and evaluated on a case-by-case basis, avoid relying on fixed formulas: confirm the current requirements with USCIS and review how your background fits with a specialist.

About the author

Victoria Harper

Editor-in-Chief

Meet the author

As a journalist and lead editor at Visto n’ Visa, Victoria helps ensure that immigration topics are covered in a clear, trustworthy, and easy-to-understand way. Her focus is on delivering useful, human, and relevant content for people exploring new paths abroad.