Tamara Cook

An EVENT-full podcast When the pandemic hit the impact was enormous and immediate for event organisers and planners. Overnight the event industry was decimated and only now are they starting to see some life come back into their sector. The focus of this episode of #TheExpertsPodcast is WA’s (and one of Australia’s) leading event planners, Tamara Cook. Tamara is the managing director of Known Associates and when I describe her as one of Australia’s best, it is not said lightly. Anyone who’s attended a Known Associates organised event, will attest to their attention to detail. She and her team are incredibly passionate and dedicated to delivering the very best event for their client. Tamara Cook is a very proud black woman, who is married to an indigenous man, former AFL player Troy Cook and they have two gorgeous children. When the Black Lives Matter movement started to get momentum here in Australia, the media was keen to cover it, but few were brave enough to speak up. Tamara wrote a compelling real account of her life in an Opinion-Editorial that was centered around racism, bullying and her true feelings growing up and working in this country. It ended up as a front page story plus a stand-alone news piece along with the feature as an Opinion piece. Nic describes it as “the bravest and most important piece of media he has been involved with in his twenty-five years of media”. The lesson we can take from listening to this podcast is about having the courage to speak up and tell your story – it’s very easy to make excuses and create hurdles for yourself but with some determination, guidance and bravery, you can make a difference. Tamara will be mortified if you think this one story was the focus of the podcast because it wasn’t. There was plenty of content gold around networking, event management and planning and what the future looks like for getting that special event together.