In the room.

Angelique Mastoroudes is the President of the Kiwanis Club of Sydney and the founder of Bee Positive Consulting. She convenes this series, bringing together the people, the partners, and the practical conversations that matter. Her work centres on the harder conversations most people put off, about mortality, legacy, family, and what we leave behind. She joined the Kiwanis Club of Sydney when the club started the Comfort Care Cases programme at Sydney Children’s Hospital. The project itself was what brought her in. That work walks with families at the end of a child’s life, and it shapes the belief that runs through everything she does: that being prepared makes the hardest moments a little less crushing, and that families deserve to be spared from guessing when a loved one can no longer speak for themselves. Angelique speaks to why these conversations matter, and why now.

“When we allow ourselves to accept and talk about death and planning, how much space is created.”

Carol Russell has spent 20 years as a mortgage and finance broker, following a career in banking before that. Over that time she has sat with thousands of people at the financial turning points of their lives. Through Your Finance Lady, Carol helps older Australians navigate the money side of later life: home loans and equity release (reverse mortgages), investment decisions, and planning for the next stages of life. Her focus is helping people stay in the home they love, with a decent income and funds set aside for everything else life still holds. She is also a Justice of the Peace and a registered marriage celebrant.

David Choi is the founder of My Lasting Plan. Before this, he spent 20 years as an institutional portfolio manager, most recently as Director of Portfolio Construction at AustralianSuper. Driven by personal family experience, he left his corporate career to tackle the urgent need for financial safety in retirement. My Lasting Plan is a local social enterprise with a simple mission: affordable, accessible financial safety for everyone. It helps older Australians age with dignity and confidence, using digital tools that safeguard financial independence and support wellbeing in retirement. By encouraging transparency early and building a trusted network of supporters around a person, it works to close the gap in financial safety that opens as circumstances change with age, and to guard against elder financial abuse.

Drew Browne is the Founder and Senior Advisor of Sapience Financial, a Sydney-based speciality personal risk advisory practice with more than 25 years of experience. His work focuses on families, small business owners, and individuals whose circumstances don’t fit standard categories: people who need life insurance, income protection, and modern estate planning tailored to real, complex lives. Sapience is a trauma-informed practice, and Drew’s philosophy, Secure People Live Bigger Lives, reflects what he has seen again and again in over two decades of practice: that the confidence to face the future comes from knowing you are protected, and that the people who love you will be protected too. His practice is particularly known for helping people whose circumstances make it hard to get standard cover: complex medical histories, high-risk occupations, and unusual life situations. Drew speaks to the conversations and protections that matter when the unexpected happens, and the specific gaps in most people’s preparation that only become visible when it’s already too late.

“The hardest part isn’t the paperwork or the products. It’s having the conversation.”

Lucky (Laxmi) Manna is a Certified Financial Planner and Principal Financial Adviser at Six Pillars Wealth, a Sydney firm whose stated values place Legacy at the centre of the work they do with families. Her practice covers the full arc of the second half of life: retirement planning, aged care transitions, intergenerational wealth transfer, and estate planning. She works with families through the money and care conversations that most people avoid until they’re forced into them, and she sees, constantly, what happens when those conversations don’t get had until it’s too late. Lucky speaks to what needs to be discussed and documented before a health crisis hits, and why having the conversation early is one of the most caring things you can do for the people around you.

“Permission and a starting point: the confidence to start one conversation with one family member.”

Nicky Myers is an independent funeral director who describes herself as your deathcare companion, someone who walks with families before, during, and after a death. Her practice, Your Funeral Director, is available around the clock across Sydney, the Blue Mountains, and the Central Coast, and offers burial and cremation services, doula support, memorial arrangements, prepaid funeral plans, twilight services, and death cafes. She calls it deathcare done differently. The work isn’t a single-day event but a steady, reassuring presence for families through one of life’s most tender times. Nicky speaks to what happens when the moment comes, and what people wish they’d known beforehand.

“Take a breath. We will guide you, step by step. You don’t need to have the answers.”