Some 12 years ago Katie Stjernholm, an Ambassadorial Scholar was coming to do her Masters at Melb Uni and Past President Phil Endersbee was asked to be her mentor.
Her studies went as planned and over the year Katie made plenty of friends both international and locals and of course got to see some of Australia. Initially Phil gave her a bike to get to Uni but as time went by with semester breaks and then the big Christmas break Phil gave her one of his old sales reps cars – a Falcon Wagon with 350K kilometres on the clock. The instructions to Kate were that if it broke down in the middle of nowhere then feel free to just walk on by !!!!!
Towards the end of Kate’s study time in Melbourne she was hired by the Lonely Planet as part of her case work and then once she graduated they offered her a job. Soon afterwards the Lonely Planet was sold to BBC and then a short time later it was bought by an American firm.
So Kate ended up back in the USA with Lonely Planet but then decided to move back to Boulder, Colorado and set up her own business.
Her business now focuses on contract roles dealing with branding strategy, digital marketing strategy, content strategy and in this space she has been very successful with some of their national and Olympic sporting teams, as well as in tourism for Boulder.
Her partner Ben comes from Alaska and is a film producer so the 2 of them share their time between Colorado & Alaska.
The Endersbee family have always kept in contact with Kate so it was a delight when she said she was coming out to Australia for 10 days, with Ben, and wanted to catch up !!!
By Phil Endersbee
