Mary Kostakidis - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

She was born in Thessaloniki, Greece and migrated to Australia with her family two years later. Kostakidis attended Fort Street Girls' High School, and the University of Sydney, where she studied Modern Greek, Philosophy, French, German and Italian. She was also a founding member and first President of the University's Greek Society. She went on to complete a Diploma of Education. Kostakidis was awarded a post-graduate scholarship to study at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.

Before joining SBS, Kostakidis worked as a tutor at the University of Sydney, as a research officer for the Departments of Health and Youth and Community Services in New South Wales and as a court interpreter and a translations editor. She once worked for ABC Radio news. During her assignment as an interpreter on the so-called Greek Conspiracy Case in the late 1970s, she organised a conversion course for Greek interpreters at the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission in conjunction with Sydney University Modern Greek lecturer Dr Alfred Vincent, to facilitate a conversion from the formal katharevousa to demotic or vernacular Greek so that the defendants in the case would be able to understand the language being used. Some years later, Greece also adopted the vernacular as the language of all official documents.