Cassie Day
Few keynote speakers can claim the journey of carer, founder and sector leader–but Cassie Day isn’t most speakers. Named Carer of the Year in 2024, she’s one of Australia’s most influential voices on the care economy, bringing a rare mix of lived experience, business smarts and sector leadership to every stage she steps onto.
Cassie’s story started long before the awards and sold-out summits. She was a young mum with a thriving career when life changed in an instant–her newborn son, Matthew, was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at just four weeks old. Overnight, the corporate world she’d been excelling in was replaced by hospital rooms, medical jargon and endless care plans. She learned to fight fiercely for her son, rebuilt her own health after hitting burnout, and led her family through unimaginable challenges including a traumatic brain injury and further diagnoses of autism and clinical depression. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Cassie realised something that would shape everything that followed: caring isn’t a “soft” role. It’s specialised. It’s relentless. And it’s one of the most misunderstood, underestimated and undervalued roles in society.
That realisation changed everything. Cassie channelled lived experience into leadership–founding The Carers Place, a national business that grew from her kitchen table into a seven-figure NDIS business supporting families with disability, chronic illness and special needs across Australia, before successfully exiting. She also founded the wildly popular Connect & Collaborate events and the sell-out NDIS State of the Nation Summit, cementing her reputation as a changemaker who can convene rooms, sell out events and shift conversations at a national level.
Today, her work has reached thousands of carers, families and professionals across the country and is sought after by organisations and policymakers in the care sector. A multi-award-winning entrepreneur and speaker, Cassie challenges audiences to rethink what resilience, leadership and reform really look like in one of Australia’s most critical–and most burnout-prone–sectors. At conferences and events, she champions the changemakers and risk-takers; the people deeply invested in disability, care and health, helping them pair passion with strategy, and vision with leadership, so the sector can not just survive, but thrive. Her message is applicable to anyone leading through change, building purpose-led businesses, or striving to improve systems.
Email me: cassie@cassieday.com