Our Approach

The Director and lead educator for the Conversations for Life programme, Mary Matthiesen learned first hand that trained healthcare professionals know things the public don’t about end of life options and care, and families and patients know things healthcare staff don’t about what matters most to them. Neither can make a difference unless they talk about it. Bringing messages from both, she convened some of the best wisdom to develop programmes that inspire conversations for end of life choices for the general public and improve outcomes for healthcare staff and organizations committed to compassionate care.

OUR GOAL is to aid individuals, healthcare professionals, and communities to partner in addressing one of the greatest social issues facing our generation-one conversation at a time.

OUR PROGRAMS are based on the lived stories and experience of professionals and family members alike, who have held, or regretted not holding, end of life conversations and lived with the outcomes. Through their stories, we teach and remind us all about what’s essential and what’s possible when we are prepared.

What Matters Most
Our programs are all about our quality of living and what matters most. They move beyond simply educating and instructing the public, patients and healthcare professionals about choices. They combine communication skills and content with compassion and a common goal.

Through story, experiential exercises and front-line experience, we focus on developing the awareness, motivation, and confidence in the roles we each have in choosing and requesting our own care, while supporting healthcare professionals to work in partnership with patients, families, and other community organizations to ensure the end of our lives are supported to meet our wishes.

How We Work

The projects we engage in benefit many individuals, groups, and organizations whose work and collaboration are all needed to create change over time. Yet limits on funding, staffing, or time prevent community awareness and collaboration from happening.

By providing replicable, story-based films and pilot-tested programmes we make it easy for individuals and communities to raise this awareness and collaborate towards a single achievable goal, leaving front-line community organizations to focus on the work they do best.

How are we supported?

Our aim is to ultimately provide information and materials for free to the public. We will achieve this when we have enough partner organisations and sponsors to make that a reality. In the meantime, we charge fees for our products, training, consulting and workshop delivery and seek funding and sponsorships from grants, individual donations and corporate partners.

We are a registered company with Companies House and with the Community Investment Corporation Registrars Office (CIC), which means that we are in the business of doing good. Our work is for community benefit and our not for profit status ensures that all funds received are part of an ‘asset-locked’ not for profit organization so they are re-invested in the work we do.

Our Directors

Mary Matthiesen

Mary Matthiesen is an international healthcare educator, programme director and community facilitator promoting culture change in support of living and dying well. She is director of Stories to Change, CIC and the Conversations for Life Programme, delivering consulting, public and professional workshops and a community-based (film, web, workshop) model to address one of the most significant issues facing our generation-compassionate end of life care. Mary brings 17 years front-line experience in healthcare education and executive leadership working with regional and national organisations in the US around sudden death and organ donation, women and heart disease, sacred dying and suicide and mental illness. Her personal commitment to improving end of life care is based on delivering workshops to thousands of members of the public and professionals alike, interviews with leaders in the field, and personal experience supporting both parents at end of life. She holds a degree in Psychobiology and certificates from Stanford University in Executive Leadership and is a trained facilitator with the Cancer Monologue Project. She has been the executive producer of “Care for the Journey” CD for healthcare professionals, “Women and Heart Disease” DVD, and “Breaking the Silence”, DVD. Since moving to the UK, she has established MEM Associates, Ltd. under which she delivered the Conversations for Life programme in collaboration with NHS Cumbria. The project received a national endorsement by the Department of Health. This programme and model are now being launched regionally and nationally under a newly formed social enterprise, Stories to Change, CIC.

Pauline Nicola Rudge

Nicola Rudge is an innovation catalyst bringing 20 years experience in design and media production and consulting internationally. After a successful career in media as Art Director and Production Designer with Granada Television, she entered the design world in visitor attractions, award-winning hotels, and strategic design consulting. Her focus is always on the ‘whole approach’ based on the unique story behind any project. Personally, she has held a position as a patient advocate and as such played an instrumental role in what has now become the Manchester Diabetes Centre. In 2007 she returned to her passion of “film for good”, completing a documentary film course with the San Francisco School of Documentary Film Making and taking a role as Production Assistant on “Get Hip to Good Food” – a film that has since inspired regional and government support in rebuilding edible school gardens in the aftermath of hurricaine Katrina in New Orleans. After returning to the UK, she has recently joined Mary Matthiesen as co-director of Stories to Change, CIC.

She holds a degree from Manchester University of Technology, is a current member of BECTU, is a trained facilitator with the Cancer Monologue Project, the Expert Patient Programme, and is a certified master NLP practitioner.

Our Board

Nick Fayers
Development manager, School of Health & Medicine, Lancaster University. An innovative and pragmatic development specialist with a background in learning and development, talent management and organisational change in public and private sector including key roles in ‘health builders’ in Cumbria, UK, and as architect for global leadership development programme for a communications strategy group (Asia-Pacific, EMEA and Americas). Personally, the stories of friends and family around the death of loved one’s and my passion to support work that encourages collaboration and ‘wrap around care’ inspired me to become part of this important work and organisation.

Carol Burrow
Business and Training Consultant with a career history gained within Blue Chip organisations over a 20 year period. Including roles as HR executive for Rank Holidays, Oasis, Marks and Spencer, Norweb etc

Particular strengths in problem analysis and project management. My involvement with Conversations for Life came whilst providing coaching for Mary as part of the High Growth project financially backed by North West Development Agency.

I was struck by Mary’s vision for the work and the enormous passion that has propelled it through a myriad of circumstances. The company has a message to deliver that has application to the entire human race and a vehicle that allows us all to deal with that difficult conversation- “How do I want to die?”

Catherine Connor

We are grateful for the input and feedback from our many advisors including:

Helen Clayson, MD
Dawn Tierney, MS, Chaplain
Katherine Froggart, PhD