When Leaders Gather: Sistability at the Northern Rivers Leadership Forum
Last week, Sistability CEO and co-founder Jade Taylor took the stage as a guest speaker at the Northern Rivers Leadership Health & Culture Forum, a full-day gathering of some of the region's most forward-thinking voices from business, health, education, government, and community.
Hosted by Business NSW Northern Rivers and curated by Regional Director Jane Laverty, the forum brought together leaders to explore a single, ambitious question: how do we build a Northern Rivers that is stronger, healthier, and better equipped for the future?
For Jade, it was an opportunity to speak from experience, not theory.
A Room of People Who Get It
The event drew a remarkable line-up of speakers, including Mindy Woods from Karkalla Byron Bay, Luke Elias from Healthy North Coast, Jodi Sampson from Corporate Culcha, Tim Jack Adams from GreenX7, Dr Jean Renouf from Safer Future, and Cate McQuillen from mememedia, with MC duties handled by the brilliant Tracey Spicer AM.
What made the day distinctive wasn't just the calibre of the speakers. It was the quality of the conversation. Attendees came ready to ask hard questions, share real experiences, and sit with the kind of discomfort that actually leads somewhere. The forum wasn't a day of polished presentations delivered to a passive audience. It was a working session, and that made all the difference.
Jade, Sistability CEO, 2nd from the left
What Jade Spoke About
Jade's session drew directly on what Sistability sees and does every day across our service areas in the Northern Rivers.
The through-line of her presentation was simple: practical action matters, and it starts with paying attention to what people actually need.
She spoke about what it means to run a service organisation in a regional community where the gaps between need and support can be wide, and where the people who fall into those gaps are often invisible to formal systems. Sometimes the most urgent issues aren't the ones on any referral form. Sometimes it's the state of someone's home. Sometimes it's what they're sleeping on.
Jade also spoke to the broader case for social enterprise as a model for community building, not just service delivery. Creating flexible, local employment, she argued, is itself an act of community investment. Strong communities aren't built by delivering services to people. They're built by creating opportunity alongside them.
And threading through both of those ideas was a message about what care actually looks like when it's done with dignity and without shortcuts. The hoarding and squalor jobs that go unspoken. The person in crisis who needed a clean kitchen and a fresh start to avoid losing their home. These are the stories that don't often make it into a forum presentation, and that is exactly why Jade told them.
Jade, Sistability CEO, on the speakers panel
The Bigger Picture
One of the clearest themes to emerge across the whole day was that the challenges facing the Northern Rivers are too large, too complex, and too interconnected for any single organisation, sector, or leader to solve alone.
That's a message Sistability has long operated by. Whether it's brokering services with other aged care providers, partnering with community organisations, or showing up for clients that others have turned away, the work has always been relational. The forum reinforced something we already know: the region's resilience comes from the people in it, and from what becomes possible when they choose to work together.
Continuing the Conversation
Events like the Leadership Health & Culture Forum are important not because they produce immediate answers, but because they build the relationships and shared understanding that make answers possible over time.
For Sistability, being part of that conversation is both a responsibility and a privilege. The Northern Rivers is home. The people we support live here. The workers we employ live here. That's not a marketing position. It's the reason the work is worth doing.
Having a chat at the Northern Rivers Leadership Health & Culture Forum
If you weren't at the forum, Business NSW Northern Rivers will be sharing an event highlights video, full recap, and downloadable resources on their website in the coming days. It's worth a look.
And if Jade's session sparked any questions about what Sistability does, how we work, or how we might be able to work together, we're always open to that conversation.
