Meta: Read about Cameron Poetzcher and four other Australians who have made their mark and achieved phenomenal success in the United States.
Being away from one’s home turf can be daunting, but the following five Australians have not only made the US their home, they have achieved great success on foreign shores. A list of this nature can't start with anyone other than Keith Rupert Murdoch, after all he controls a media empire that includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The Times of London, but as you will see when you read on, Murdoch is not the only Aussie making a dent in the US.
Keith Rupert Murdoch - Media Mogul
After acquiring several newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, Murdoch started expanding to the UK. Next he moved to New York City to enter into the US market. He bought the San Antonio Express-News and launched Star, a supermarket tabloid. In the 1970s Murdoch acquired the New York Post and in the mid-1980s he gave up his Australian citizenship to satisfy US requirements when he acquired shares in 20th Century Fox (now 21st Century Fox). In the following years, Murdoch diversified his interests and became influential in US politics. His net worth is said to be around US$13 billion as of 2017.
Curtis Stone – Celebrity Chef
Curtis Stone began his studies in business, but eventually decided to pursue a career as a chef. He started cooking with his grandmother in Melbourne when he was just four years old and at the young age of 18 he got his first job as a cook at the Savoy Hotel. After getting his Chef's certification, Stone headed for London where he worked at Café Royal and Mirabelle. Next stop was California, where Stone opened Maude, his first restaurant, which he named after his grandmother. In the years to follow he appeared in several cooking programs in Australia, the UK and the US, including America’s Next Great Restaurant, Kitchen Inferno, My Kitchen Rules and Masterchef. Stone has published six cooking and lifestyle books so far, two of which are based on his successful food & travel series Surfing the Menu.
Cameron Poetzscher – Tech Business Executive
Early in his career, Cameron Poetzscher worked as a strategic consultant and financial advisor at Booz & Co (now Strategy&) in Sydney. But after a couple of years he left for Harvard Business School and stayed on in the US. He found a home away from home at Goldman Sachs where he worked for almost two decades in high ranking roles. He began as Managing Director of the Tech & Media Division, a position that took him to New York and San Francisco, then moved to Singapore, where he served as COO of M&A in Asia, and returned to the San Francisco Bay Area as Managing Director of M&A. In 2014 Poetzscher was appointed VP of Corporate Development at Uber, where he works to this day.
Rob Machado – Professional Surfer
Known as a ‘soul surfer’ because of his casual style and humble personality, Rob Machado is one of the most well-known goofy-foot surfers in the world. Machado was born in Sydney but by high school he was already in San Diego, which is still his hometown today. Machado has won some of the most prestigious international surfing competitions including Hawaii’s Pipeline Masters and the US Open. He is the founder of the Rob Machado Foundation, which runs water filling projects across the US in order to increase the use of filtered water and reusable bottles, and clean up the beaches and natural waterways.
Elizabeth Blackburn – Molecular Biologist
Born in Tasmania, Elizabeth Blackburn began her academic education at Melbourne University where she received a Master of Science. She moved to Cambridge to work on her doctorate in molecular science and wrote her postdoc in molecular and cellular biology at Yale. Blackburn continued her academic career in the US, at the University of California where she researched telomere, a cap like layer at the end of each DNA strand that protects our chromosomes from deterioration. Blackburn has held several high-ranking roles in the American science field. She's President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and co-founder of Telomere Health, a company that offers telomere length testing to the public. In 2009 she was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering telomerase, an enzyme that replenishes telomere – making massive progress in the research of chronic psychological stress.
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