SENIOR ADVOCATE | KEYNOTE SPEAKER | AUTHOR | FOUNDER
Changing how America prepares for aging, fraud & family crisis.
Trust is the new currency.
Public Speaking
From senior centers to international embassies, Sherri delivers practical, memorable talks that move audiences from awareness to action.
“Sherri Combs spent decades in private banking helping people build and protect their financial futures — until she recognized that even the most carefully prepared families were completely unprepared for the emotional, physical, and financial realities of aging. Today she is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and founder of both a for-profit senior advocacy platform and a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and supporting older adults. Her work combines entrepreneurship, education, and compassion — rooted in the belief that the most meaningful legacy isn’t what we accumulate, but what we make possible for others.”
Corporate Keynotes
One in five of your employees is quietly managing an aging parent, a spouse in decline, or a family member who can no longer live alone — and none of them raised their hand. This keynote helps leaders identify the invisible caregiving load, respond without sacrificing accountability, and build organizations that protect performance without losing their people.
The fastest-growing consumer and workforce demographic in America is also the most underprepared — and the most underestimated boardroom opportunity. This keynote reframes aging from an HR liability into a competitive advantage for organizations willing to lead before the shift forces their hand. We are not designing for old people. We are designing our own future.
The conversation the compliance manual doesn't cover. Frontline banking staff know how to spot elder financial exploitation — but not how to stay in the room with someone whose reasoning has been completely overridden. This session replaces confrontation with curiosity, teaches staff to help a customer draw their own conclusion, and turns a blocked transaction into a preserved relationship. Protecting customers, relationships, and deposits when reasoning breaks down.
Every workforce policy a leader makes today about older workers is a policy they will live under in twenty years. Every culture that treats aging as decline is a culture the people building it will eventually inherit. This keynote reframes aging from a talent management problem into a systems design problem — and challenges leaders to build the workplace they would actually want to age into. Because we are not designing for them. We are designing for ourselves.
The way we think about aging determines how we prepare for it, how we lead through it, and how we experience it. This keynote examines the beliefs, language, and cultural assumptions that treat aging as something to resist — and shows what becomes possible when we replace avoidance with agency. Audiences leave with a new framework for thinking about their own future, their teams, and the older adults already in their lives.
Working caregivers are managing a second full-time job in silence — and the cost to organizations in lost productivity, absenteeism, and turnover is measurable. This keynote gives caregiving employees a resilience and boundary framework that lets them show up fully for their families without disappearing from their careers, and gives employers the language to support them without creating liability.
Every decision a leader makes today about older workers is a decision they will eventually experience themselves. This keynote challenges executive audiences to examine whether the culture they are building is one they would actually want to age into — and what it would take to lead differently before demographics force the question.
Family, Community & Advocacy
Why families wait for a fall, a diagnosis, a hospitalization, or an emergency before discussing care, finances, housing, and decisions — and what happens when they finally do it while everyone is still healthy enough to participate.
A practical framework for the decisions families should make before a crisis makes those decisions for them. This talk gives audiences a clear starting point, the language to use, and the courage to begin.
How professional scammers exploit trust, urgency, isolation, and human kindness — and what families can do before money is lost. Built on the PROVE IT™ Method and delivered to audiences from senior centers to law enforcement.
A memorable, practical consumer-protection framework that works for families, senior communities, corporate employees, and law-enforcement training. Simple enough to remember under pressure. Strong enough to stop a professional.
Families fracture not because they ran out of money, but because they ran out of communication. Drawing on three decades in private banking and family crisis management, this keynote teaches audiences why family legacies fail — and how to protect not only assets but also wishes, relationships, stories, and values before a crisis makes communication impossible.
Community & Stage Keynotes
Caring for someone as they age is one of life's greatest privileges — and one of its most exhausting journeys. This talk explores the emotional realities of caregiving, particularly for the sandwich generation, and offers a framework for shifting from obligation to meaning without disappearing in the process. Because honoring the dignity of someone in the final chapter of their life is a profound act — and you cannot do it well if you have nothing left of yourself.
We live in a culture that celebrates youth while avoiding the conversations that matter most — aging, decline, loss, and legacy. We tell ourselves there is always more time, until there isn't. This talk helps audiences change their relationship with aging: how to start the difficult conversations, prepare before a crisis forces the question, and discover the peace that comes from planning with intention instead of avoidance.
What happens when success stops being about accumulation and starts being about contribution? Drawing on a career that moved from private banking boardrooms to building a national senior advocacy platform and nonprofit, this talk explores how entrepreneurs and changemakers can build something that generates both financial sustainability and meaningful social impact. The legacy that lasts is rarely what you accumulated — it's what you made possible for others.
We spend decades preparing for careers, raising families, and accumulating wealth — and almost no time preparing for the conversations that matter most. This keynote draws on decades in private banking and senior advocacy to explore the stories we tell ourselves about time, legacy, and love: that we'll have the hard conversation later, that caregiving won't be as hard as it is, that the people we love know what we want. Warm, personal, and disarmingly honest, it gives audiences both permission and a starting point — before later becomes now.
KEYNOTES • PANELS • PODCASTS • WORKSHOPS • LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING
Interviews, speaking engagements, and podcast appearances — all in one place.
ABC Feature
Workshops & Training
Built on the trademarked PROVE It™ Method — a verification habit anyone can learn in an afternoon.
A live, plain-language class that shows seniors and families exactly how modern scams work — and how to shut them down before a dollar leaves the account.
90 minutes · Senior centers, libraries, banks, faith communities
Sherri's trademarked framework for verifying anyone who asks for money, access or information. Simple enough to tape to the refrigerator, strong enough to stop a professional.
Workbook included · Trains staff and residents together
A guided working session where families leave with the documents, decisions and contacts they were putting off — written down and shared.
Half day · Families, employers, care communities
The half-day workshop that goes where the compliance manual stops. Banking staff and financial professionals work through real scenarios: how to stay in conversation with a customer whose emotional brain has overridden logic, how to introduce doubt without confrontation, and how to use the PROVE IT™ framework as a conversation scaffold rather than a rejection script.
Half day · Banks, credit unions, financial institutions · CRA and compliance hours eligible
The same human skill, adapted for managers and HR leaders. How do you stay in a hard conversation with an employee you don't fully understand — a 68-year-old who doesn't feel seen, a caregiver who is quietly drowning, a high performer who stopped performing and won't say why? Curiosity over confrontation. Presence over procedure. The conversation that actually changes something.
Half day · HR teams, people managers, leadership development programs
An interactive leadership workshop that challenges the assumptions organizations make about age, experience, ambition, and relevance. Participants learn how to bridge generational differences, preserve institutional knowledge, reduce age bias, and create teams where experience and innovation strengthen each other rather than compete.
HALF DAY · LEADERSHIP TEAMS, HR, ERGs, ASSOCIATIONS
Press & Recognition
Sherri’s 2026 features and awards follow three decades of leadership in banking, boardrooms, and community service. The spotlight may be new. The leadership is not.
Magazine features
Awards & Honors
Podcasts & Interviews
Sherri joins hosts across senior care, personal finance and family caregiving to talk about what actually happens when a scam lands — and what a prepared family does differently. New conversations and clips are posted to her channel.
March 5, 2026The Book
Written with clarity, conviction and compassion, the book walks through real scenarios families face every day — what went wrong, what could have been done differently, and the practical steps readers can take the same week they finish a chapter.
Next Generation Indie Book Awards — Winner
Four Seasons Book Awards — Winter Edition
Los Angeles Tribune — Critically Acclaimed Best Seller
The New York Globe — Bestseller List
Chapter: “The Whisper Before the Roar”
The Los Angeles Tribune Publishing · "The White Book"
“The biggest changes in our lives rarely begin with a roar. They begin quietly — with an idea you can't quite let go of, a problem you keep noticing, a voice saying someone should do something about this. And sometimes you realize that someone is you.”
Read the New York Globe featureContributing Author · Forthcoming
Contributing Author · Forthcoming
Calendar
Speaker Bio
I spent years in private banking, helping people build and protect their financial futures. But what I came to recognize was that even people who had planned carefully for retirement were often completely unprepared for the emotional, physical, and financial realities of aging — especially when caregiving became part of the equation.
We spend decades preparing for careers, raising families, and accumulating wealth, yet we rarely prepare for the conversations and decisions that can matter most at the end of life.
What makes my story different is that I didn’t come from the senior care industry. I came from the financial world, where I learned the importance of preparation, protecting assets, and building trust. I took that experience and began building an entirely new ecosystem designed to help families navigate aging, avoid exploitation, and find trustworthy support.
But there’s a deeper message behind my work. I believe we need to change the way our culture views aging and caregiving. Caring for someone in the final chapters of their life can be a sacred privilege — but it can also be exhausting, isolating, and overwhelming. We need to give caregivers permission to acknowledge both truths. Love doesn’t eliminate exhaustion, and needing help doesn’t diminish devotion.
I also believe one of the greatest illusions we live under is the belief that we have more time. More time to prepare. More time to have difficult conversations. More time to say what needs to be said. Until one day, we don’t.
Today, I’m an award-winning author, speaker, and founder of both a for-profit senior advocacy platform and a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and supporting older adults. I’m building something that challenges the traditional approach to aging — combining entrepreneurship, education, community, and compassion.
My story is about redefining success, challenging the way we think about aging, and recognizing that sometimes the most meaningful thing we can build isn’t just a business. It’s a legacy that makes life better for people we’ll never even meet.
About Sherri
Her family settled Texas and New Mexico by covered wagon. Sherri was born and raised in San Diego, and the road eventually brought her back to where the family story began — she lives in Fort Worth, Texas today.
She has been happily married more than 25 years and has raised eight children: some adopted, some stepchildren, some her own natural grandchildren. It is a full house and a full table, and she would not trade either.
Animals have always found her. She counts it a humbling honor when a wild creature decides she is safe enough to land on her hand or eat from it — a small, quiet vote of confidence she never takes lightly.
Beyond that: world and domestic travel, long evenings with friends, live music, and laughing — she has a genuinely funny sense of humor and is not shy about using it. Steak, whiskey and red wine, though she will admit, unashamedly, to loving a good hamburger. And, as any good Texan knows, there are no beans in chili.
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Contact
Speaking inquiries, workshop bookings, podcast invitations and media requests all reach Sherri here. Please allow 72 hours for a reply.
