Connecting Seniors
Finishing Well: From Corporate Success to Giving Back
Ian Westmoreland
At 70, Ian Westmoreland left corporate success behind to build spaces where ordinary Australians' stories are heard with dignity.
Kintsugi Studio
Connecting Seniors
Ian Westmoreland
At 70, Ian Westmoreland left corporate success behind to build spaces where ordinary Australians' stories are heard with dignity.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
At 70, Ian Westmoreland left a corporate career behind to build something that matters. For decades, he'd chased money and status, climbing the ladder in IT while raising four kids with his wife Helen. But on September 10, 2013, his life redirected. A health crisis hit hard: cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, an antibiotic reaction that sent him to hospital. He came close to dying and found himself strangely at peace with it. What mattered then wasn't the car he drove or the title he held. It was the people he loved and the work he felt called to do.
What Ian saw in older Australians troubled him. Wisdom and skills sitting unused. People isolated, their mental and physical health declining. He'd read about intergenerational programs where seniors spent time with young children, and the results were striking: less suicide ideation, better balance, measurable improvements in wellbeing. So he started mentoring young men in schools, then founded Kintsugi Heroes, a podcast platform built on a simple belief: ordinary Australians' stories, told with dignity and heard with care, can reach the person who needs them most.
For the past decade, Ian has said this has been the most fulfilling time of his life. Not because he's famous or wealthy, but because he's stopped being defined by his roles and started being defined by his values: empathy, connection, the willingness to help one person at a time. He describes it using the starfish parable. The beach is littered with thousands, the trends keep going the wrong way, but when you throw one starfish back into the water, it matters to that one. That's where his hope lives now.
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗