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Mary Mihelakos has worked across almost every aspect of the Australian music industry since she first began volunteering for 3RRR radio as a teenager in the late 1980s. She has worked as a booker, publicist and manager for a wide range of venues and bands. Following studies in media and journalism at Swinburne Uinversity she bacame Music Editor of Beat Magazine in Melbourne in 1995, and also worked as a “Sticky Carpet” columnist for The Age, a DJ, and a founder and producer of numerous landmark festivals. In 2003 she founded the Aussie BBQ at SXSW in Texas which was later replicated in Los Angeles, New York, Hamburg and London among other places. In 2020, Mihelakos was inducted into the Music Victoria Hall of Fame.

Early life
Mihelakos's support for Australian artists and her desire to advance the local music scene stems from an early love of music which can be traced back to her roots in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne. The youngest of three sisters, she attended her first live performance at Festival Hall in Melbourne in 1983 when she attended an INXS concert.