His sister, Alexia, wrote in North & South in 2014 her younger brother was very ambitious. "My family and I are still amused when we look back at Kamahl's bold statement as a young man in his early 20s: "You know I'll crack the BBC or CNN one day". We dismissed it as big talk," she wrote.
Santamaria landed first in Melbourne, working for 18 months for Sky New Australia as a business reporter.
He then went to London with Carrie, his then-partner and now wife, for his OE, but soon found himself moving to Doha to help launch Al Jazeera English, the Qatar-owned news outlet that sought to build the world's first Middle-East-centred broadcast news network.
The station has employed a significant number of New Zealand journalists, with Santamaria himself saying: "We're known as the 'Kiwi Mafia' at Al Jazeera because there's just so many of us! But it's with good reason. The Kiwi work ethic is legendary; we just get on with it."
At Al Jazeera Santamaria worked as a news presenter delivering bulletins and for a time fronted the weekly business programme, Counting the Cost.
Now 42, he maintained property holdings in New Zealand during his time abroad, and registry records show in July 2020 he and his wife bought a $2.5m five-bedroom home in Remuera.
A publicity interview with The Spinoff timed to coincide with the start of his Breakfast tenure but published at its end tackled the notorious early starts at his new show.
"I'm quite fine with that. I'm a creature of habit, I'm a creature of routine. This will suit me perfectly. But again, ask me in another month, I might be saying, 'For God's sake what have I done?'"
In that interview he also addressed the vastly different global presences of his former - and now also former - employers.
"You know, there's been a lot of perception that I've come from a big international news thing, and we're coming to TVNZ, which is, by comparison, and I'm using air quotes here, 'local news'. But it's not like that at all," he said.
"It's a big operation down [at TVNZ]. And there's so much more accountability. When you broadcast on international news, yes, you have an audience of millions around the world. But you don't see them. You get interactions on social media. But you don't have an audience in front of you, or around you," he said.
"You broadcast into the void almost and there's not – accountability is not quite the right word, but you haven't got that audience keeping its eye on you."
Santamaria is understood to have been appointed to his short-lived role hosting Breakfast - lasting less than a month before resigning amid claims of "inappropriate behaviour" by at least one female colleague - by TVNZ executive Paul Yurisich.
He is another member of the "Kiwi Mafia" who joined the state-owned broadcaster as head of news and current affairs in late 2020 after a long stint at Al Jazeera.
Yurisich had spent the first 15 years of his career working at TVNZ and TV3, rising to the position of bulletins editor at One News before he left for Doha in 2006 to join Santamaria as part of the team launching Al Jazeera English.
Another of Yurisich's recent hires, TVNZ new digital news chief Mereana Hond, was also plucked straight from the Doha-based network.
