Episode 24

Family Stories: The Heart of Legacy

Purpose of Wealth Podcast

About the episode

Have you ever stopped to think about the legacy you’ll leave behind?

For entrepreneurial families, legacy is about far more than financial success. It’s about the story behind the wealth.

The risks taken, the turning points, the values that guided each decision, and the purpose that holds it all together.

Documenting your family history brings those stories to life. It preserves not just names and dates, but the challenges, triumphs, lessons and defining moments that shape who you are – and what future generations can learn from.

In this episode of the Purpose of Wealth, host Narelle Hooper sits down with archivist and historian Dr Stella Barber to explore why capturing your family story matters, how to preserve it in meaningful ways, and how those stories can strengthen identity, connection and purpose across generations.

Featuring

Narelle Hooper - Host

During more than 25 years as a business and finance journalist and editor Narelle has worked for Australia’s leading media groups including the ABC, Fairfax Media and SBS TV. She’s a former Editor of the Australian Financial Review’s BOSS Magazine and was founding co-chair of the Financial Review’s Women of Influence Awards.

Narelle is also a member of the board of the The Ethics Centre. She has held a number of non executive director roles over the past decade, including with the Tasmanian Development Board, the Documentary Australia Foundation and with women's entrepreneurship accelerator SBE Australia, which runs the Springboard Enterprises program.

Dr Stella M. Barber - Guest

Dr Stella M. Barber is a professional historian, author, and oral historian whose work explores the intersection of social, cultural, and institutional history. She is the author of eighteen books and numerous historical publications, including commissioned histories for major Australian organisations and families.

She holds a PhD for her thesis Woomera’s Women: Rolls and Roles of Film, which examines the work of women camera operators at the Anglo-Australian rocket range at Woomera during the early Cold War. The research brings together archival sources, oral history interviews and film analysis to illuminate an overlooked chapter in Australia’s technological and cultural history. The project is currently being developed further as a book and documentary.

Dr Barber’s work spans books, exhibitions, museum interpretation, documentary research and historical consulting. She has worked with a wide range of cultural institutions, corporations, and community organisations, including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Heritage NSW, the National Communications Museum, the Myer family, and the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Her book Crescendo: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Celebrating 100 Years received a Commendation in the Victorian Community History Awards. She has also appeared in television and radio programs as a historian and commentator.

Dr Barber is particularly interested in business, family, and social history, and in the ways archival research and oral testimony can bring historical narratives to life.

She lives on Victoria’s Bass Coast and, when not writing, enjoys swimming, film, reading and spending time with her cat Chloe and her family.