Tamara Kobiolke

Name: Tamara Kobiolke
Age: 29
Born: Melbourne, Australian
Lived in Scotland: Seven years

Born in Melbourne and raised on the Gold Coast, Tamara came to Scotland as part of her world travels in 1999 after graduating with a degree in Accountancy from the University of New England in New South Wales.  While her father’s roots are Polish, she also had some ancestral links with Scotland as her grandmother on her mother’s side of the family was born in Fife.

Upon arriving in Edinburgh, Tamara was impressed by the beauty of the capital city and its 'friendly and multi-cultural' feel and decided she would stay for a short period and explore career opportunities. She landed an accountancy position with one of Edinburgh's universities but after a year in the profession decided that a career change was on the cards.

"I enjoyed studying accountancy," she says, "but decided that I would prefer to work in hospitality, an industry which is well developed in Scotland."

Tamara landed a job as an event manager at the Old Course Hotel, one of the nation's leading five star hotels, situated in St Andrews, the home of golf. 12 months later she was lured to an Edinburgh corporate event management company where she managed a wide portfolio of clients for two years. In 2003, she briefly left the UK and travelled to Namibia where she undertook a six month voluntary post with the Raleigh International Expedition, an initiative which was part of the Millennium Awards Fund, bringing together young people from diversely different social backgrounds.

While in Namibia Tamara received a job offer to head up the event planning department at the recently launched, five star St Andrews Bay Golf Resort and jumped at the chance to go back to Scotland. 

"It was an exciting opportunity for me and it gave me a great opportunity to go back to live and work in Scotland. I initially took on the head of events role but after two years I made a move into corporate sales at the hotel as it offered me further career development."

In her current role as corporate sales manager, Tamara looks after clients in the central belt of Scotland, covering its main population centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as Spain, Portugal and Australia.

"It's a great job, I'm out on the road two or three days a week and at my office in St Andrews – which is one of the most beautiful places in the world - the rest of the time," says Tamara.

"I live in Edinburgh which I've found to be a very friendly city with a real cosmopolitan and multicultural feel to it. It is also a very user-friendly place, it's easy to get around and you can easily survive without a car.

"While I do love Australia, I am immensely enjoying life in Scotland. It is a great to live and work and overall, it is a beautiful country which has a high standard of living. The hospitality industry here works together in a very positive manner – while the hotels do compete against each other, there is also a close cooperation between them and they work well together for the greater good of promoting Scotland which can only be a good thing."