Mr Ari Gaitanis

United Nations Official and Journalist

After finishing at State High, Ari went on to study at the University of Queensland. While there, he worked the overnight and graveyard shifts at the Channel 9 newsroom in Mount Coot-tha.

When he graduated, he started work as a journalist at the WIN Television newsroom in Toowoomba, followed by work for ABC TV News and Current Affairs in the Northern Territory and central Queensland.

Like many others, he then went overseas. He worked as a journalist in Mexico and subsequently, he became a correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires in Spain and the United Kingdom. While in the UK, he studied for a master's degree in war studies from King's College London.

He left journalism soon after graduation to work for the United Nations, joining the Spokesperson's Office of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in 2003 and subsequently returning to the Spokesperson's Office during the tenure of UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. 

In between those assignments and afterwards, he has served in other roles at the UN Headquarters in New York City, as well as on longer postings to Lebanon, Thailand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Somalia, and shorter visits and assignments to Sudan, Haiti, Chile, Thailand, Cambodia and West Africa.  These include deployments to Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006, to Cambodia for the start of the first Khmer Rouge trial in 2008, to Somalia for a famine in its capital in 2011 and to West Africa for the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

Ari is currently in Mogadishu, where he heads the strategic communications office for the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM).

He has very fond memories of BSHS and is grateful for teachers who had a lasting impact on his life, especially his senior high school English teacher, Ms. Patricia Millar, with whom he has remained in contact since finishing school. "I owe a lot to Ms. Millar. Teachers who believe in their students can make a world of difference in their lives, especially at that age."

Asides from the academic element of school life, Ari stresses the social element. Many of his oldest and dearest friends are those with whom he went to BSHS with. "I was lucky to be part of a close group of good friends at BSHS who are still a close group of good friends now, no matter where life has taken us. The friendships you make at school can be life-enriching and good for the soul, and as important in the long-term as what happens in the classroom and on the sports field!"