Our Team

  • Teresa’s very varied background has given her confidence to lead the creation of Earthly Legacy as a non-profit organisation. She initially trained and practised as a registered nurse and later moved into sales and marketing in the healthcare industry for 15 years, backed up by a Business degree in marketing and international marketing. Teresa has worked in global corporate companies internationally, and in global manufacturing companies locally, as well as for local distributors. On the side over the last three decades, she has been the silent(ish) partner focussing on administration and marketing for three restaurants in Australia and a wine company that exported to the USA. She is a freelance business writer and published her first novel in 2023. She also helped drive the establishment (first as a volunteer and then as founding CEO) of Primary Ethics, a charity that created curriculum and recruited, vetted and trained volunteers to teach philosophical ethics to public primary school kids in NSW who didn’t go to religion classes. There were 2000 volunteers when Teresa left her role in 2016. For the last three years, Teresa has keenly followed the establishment of human body composting in the USA. In early 2024 she decided to embark on making the process available in Australia to as many people as possible using a non-profit social enterprise model. She has recently completed certification (via an online course in the USA) to be a Natural Organic Reduction Operator.

  • Gerhard is an avid and passionate composter who has actively delivered science-based composting for more than 20 years. Whether in industry consulting roles or presenting workshops to Landcare groups or resourceful farmers and gardeners, Gerhard reverts to the principles of nature where the living is enhanced through the transformation by microbiology of spent life.

  • Helen is an engineer with diverse experience in simulation modelling, fieldwork, education, and accreditation across private companies, government agencies, universities, and associations in Australia and internationally. Helen brings these experiences and her expertise to Earthly Legacy, focusing on optimizing the composting system to minimise costs and mitigate environmental impacts.

  • Tui passionately believes in sustainability and is committed to a better story at the end of life. As founder of the Canberra-based non-profit organisation, Earthly Remains, she advocates for human body composting (aka natural organic reduction/NOR/terramation) as a beautiful and dignified way to return to and contribute to the cycle of life. Tui is building a national profile promoting the need for this type of body disposition, leading the government advocacy and public education drive for non-profit human body composting in Australia.

  • Sam has a passion for death care and the cultural practices surrounding death in Australia. Currently, Sam is the General Manager for Tender Funerals Mid North Coast and the Franchise Development and Compliance Lead for Tender Funerals Australia. With tertiary education in forensic medical sciences specialising in mortuary practices, Sam is a mortician by trade with strong experience in the funeral industry, particularly in mortuary care, funeral practices, research, and training.

  • Janet is a management all-rounder and lifelong composter with a social conscience. Janet's career includes hospitality, teaching and 20 years of senior management in education. Janet has established and operated several small, community-based not-for-profits. She has a keen focus on aligning internal resources to meet strategic objectives.

  • Zoli is a recent Industrial Design graduate from RMIT whose Honours thesis focussed on sustainable deathcare. Zoli would love to work with Earthly Legacy when we open our doors in Victoria, but has joined the team now as an enthusiastic, smart, young intern.

Why Non-profit?

Teresa Russell, the founder of Earthly Legacy, was initially interested in the environmental sustainability of human composting through reduced carbon emissions and transforming bodies into life-giving soil that could regenerate degraded land. 

However, having read the 102-page 2021 report from UTS’ Institute for Sustainable Futures: Pathways towards sustainable burial and cremation options for NSW, prepared for Cemeteries and Crematoria NSW, Teresa noted that the single biggest challenge to the industry making [voluntary] changes to its processes and practices to become more sustainable, is that the sector is ‘sales-focussed’ and ‘profit driven’ with ‘consumers who are particularly vulnerable and disempowered’ who ‘choose cremation because it is the cheaper of the two options presented in NSW at present’, and ‘not because it is particularly aligned with their values or preferences’. The report also noted that ‘current regulation in NSW perpetuates the inertia’ and that big operators that ‘control a huge proportion of the market in NSW have direct incentives to maintain the status quo’.

When Teresa’s mother, Anne, died in early 2023, she was shocked at the cost of her mum’s funeral (which was covered by a funeral bond) and thought, ‘What do the poor people do?’ She found out that for those who cannot afford the cost of a funeral, the only option is to relinquish their loved-one’s body to the state for a Destitute Person’s cremation or burial.

With 33% of Australians having no emergency savings and 40% having less than $1,000 saved, it is no surprise that the term ‘funeral poverty’ is now in our lexicon.

According to The Cost of Death 2.0 Report, 2023, around 33% of Australians over 50 years who have paid for a funeral experienced some financial hardship due to the costs incurred. Of those, 66% stated that it took months to recover financially.

To correct this injustice and to provide equity for those in the lowest socioeconomic brackets, Teresa founded Earthly Legacy as a non-profit organisation that would charge a fair price for human composting to those who can afford it and direct all profits and donated funds to compost the poor and destitute, thereby increasing Earthly Legacy’s social and environmental impact.