From New Zealand Classroom to 65 Countries to a Scottish Island
The Story
Milly Tamati grew up in a small farming town in New Zealand where traditional career expectations were limited (Source 1). She attended the University of Waikato from 2010 to 2012 and earned a Bachelor of Teaching with a major in Professional Education (Source 3).
After graduating, she booked a one-way ticket from New Zealand to Berlin and never came home (Source 3). She traveled through 65+ countries, “creating a squiggly, meandering career that didn’t look like the traditional career ladder” (Source 3).
Before the age of 30, she co-owned a hostel in Thailand, co-founded a wine tour in Australia, and founded an illustration agency in the UK (Source 2). She also built a startup in the Philippines and worked as a tour guide for Busabout from 2014 to 2017 (Source 2).
She has been building businesses for approximately eight years, either her own or as an early employee (Source 1). She now lives on the Isle of Raasay in Scotland, a remote island with a population of approximately 170 people, featuring a castle and a distillery (Source 1). She describes it as one of the most isolated places in Europe, 7 hours from the nearest major city (Source 1).
Lesson for Creators
Milly’s career reads like a series of random experiments, but each one built a different skill: hospitality, sales, design, teaching, operations. She had no language for what she was building until she discovered the word “generalist.” The career that looked scattered from the outside was actually a compounding portfolio of transferable skills. The remote island wasn’t a retreat from ambition. It became the headquarters of a six-figure business precisely because the work she built didn’t require a city.