Tender Western sydney
Tender Funerals Western Sydney Team
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Amy Sagar
Chairperson
Amy has been a funeral director since she was 16 years old. With over 14 years experience in funeral service behind her, Amy has supported countless families & communities in creating meaningful funeral ceremonies. Amy studied embalming and advanced mortuary care. She has a passion for providing community education and facilitating family participation for people who choose to washing & dress the body of their loved one.
After working in the traditional funeral industry for 8 years Amy joined the Port Kembla community in opening and operating Tender Funerals Illawarra & Sydney in 2016 and served as General Manager before stepping away to grow her family. You might recognize Amy from our episode of Australian Story.
Amy is now a part time funeral director with Tender Funerals Illawarra and is working to bring Tender closer to home in Western Sydney.
Ekaterina Frolov (Kat)
Vice Chairperson
Kat is a music and medical science graduate. She currently works as both the LGBTQIA+ Project Support Officer and Equity Ambassador within the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion at the University of Technology (UTS), Sydney. Kat has accrued many years of volunteer experience which has ranged from utilising her musical abilities in various community spaces to governance experience in both finding and running a society for Women and Non-binary students who pursue STEMM fields at UTS. Kat has a penchant for projects that are complex and transdisciplinary, with the overarching aim of working toward equitable change within our communities across a range of different areas.
Jesse Star
Director
Jes is intensely passionate about normalising dying, death and funerals and believes in the authentic inclusion, of folks normally ‘left on the outside’, by enfolding them into all of these rites of passage.
Jes long ago took euphemisms such as ‘passed away’, out of her vocabulary, in order to personally embrace, support education around, and to positively role model the truth of the power around dying, death and funeral language. Jes has 26 years experience as an independent funeral celebrant providing life affirming funerals for people who come from all faiths, no faith and folks living in the
LGBTQIA+ communities in and around Western Sydney.
Jes is the spiritual and emotional support staff for a large community of Elders who are living in an Aged Care Village in the Blue Mountains.
Christine Smith
Director
Christine (she/her) lives and work on the lands of the Darug and Gundungurra peoples, with thanks and respect. She believes that even when funerals are great, they can still be more accessible, more meaningful and more significant for more people, and that Tender Funerals are leading the way towards changes that will matter when it’s time to say goodbye. Christine is a resident of western Sydney, a registered marriage celebrant, chairs her workplace LGBTQ+ working group and has undertaken various roles in the community services sector over the past 30 years. She is keen to work collaboratively to explore the ways Tender Funerals can make a positive impact on the lives of people in western Sydney and beyond.
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Edwina Chen
Director
Edwina is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has over five years of professional experience working for both Horwath Sydney and Deloitte Australia where her skills were focused on advising financiers and management of distressed and under-performing businesses.
Wanting to give back to the community and leverage her professional skills and experience, Edwina spent two years at Save the Children in Vietnam, where she provided technical and business development support focusing on microfinance to poor and low-income women farmers, producers & traders.
Following a return to Australia, Edwina spent nine years working with the NSW Aboriginal Land Council (NSWALC) where she was responsible for the implementation and delivery of 11 programs supporting community; including the NSWALC Funeral Fund where she saw first-hand the kinship and cultural obligations associated with ‘Sorry Business’.
Edwina is passionate about improving the injustices in the funeral industry and understands the distress caused by the death of a loved one. This distress is further exacerbated as many individuals organising funerals are unfamiliar with the process and under significant time pressure. The ethos of the Tender Funerals model aims to address these injustices and bring care and compassion back to the sector.
Edwina is currently Associate Director in the First Nations Economic Wellbeing team at NSW Treasury.
