Global Journalist Marilyn Georgeff

After studying economics, followed by a cadetship at a daily newspaper, Australian Marilyn Georgeff joined the Murdoch group as women’s editor of the West Australian Sunday Times. She then moved into television journalism for Channel 7, and, a keen underwater diver, participated in several underwater documentaries for the channel, including a film on White Pointer sharks and another on a 17th Century Dutch wreck that was found off the coast of Western Australia.

In a change of countries and career paths, she left Australia for Indonesia to set up a corporate bi-lingual newspaper for the Canadian nickel mining company PT Inco on the island of Sulewisi, a task that included training local Indonesians in journalism and off-set printing.

Returning to Australia, she joined the national television broadcaster SBS in Sydney as a journalist and documentary maker, winning a number of international prizes. She produced and directed one of the first documentaries on China’s exploratory moves towards a free market in the early 80’s. While making a documentary on the 19th Century French explorer Laperouse, whose two ships were lost in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, she met her husband, and eventually moved to Paris.

Here she worked as a marketing consultant, launching the successful Australian-themed Café Oz bars and Paris’s first Australian restaruant. But her interest in film remained, and she set up her own company marketing documentaries between France and Australia. She is now a documentary consultant, and a board member of Australian Business in Europe (ABIE), a group that works to facilitate business between France and Australia, and Advance, a business networking organisation for Australians living overseas.