Funeral Service Insider: The Podcast

Danielle Burmeister, vice president of marketing for Homesteaders Life Company discusses the best ways to get and leverage earned media. Click here for more info and the transcript. 

In this episode of Funeral Service Insider, Doak Marasco discusses the effect climate change has on cemetery landscapes. See full show notes here . 

On this episode of Funeral Service Insider, Taelor Johnson of Interra Green Burial by Mueller Memorial talks about that firm's unique approach to offering green options to their families. Johnson grew up in the funeral business and has seen how it has changed in the last 20 years .     Listen to the show for discount a promo code to the Kates-Boylston Funeral Service Business Plan Conference Octob...

Barbara Kemmis, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America, joins host Tony Russo to discuss ways to navigate local opposition when opening a crematory. The Not-In-My-Back-Yard movement is often driven as much by ignorance and surprise as anything else. Working to assuage NIMBYs before they get all het up is easier than trying to calm them down once they get going. Kemmis sha...

On this episode of Funeral Service Insider, host Tony Russo interviews Derek Maher - a fourth-generation funeral director, who grew up with death being a normal topic of conversation at the dinner table. Maher emphasizes the importance of having conversations about funeral arrangements well in advance, citing the lack of guidance often resulting in families not knowing what to do.   The discussion...

Tony Kumming , the new president of Pinnacle Funeral Service, joins Tony Russo to talk about his vision for growing the company and the shifting concerns surrounding the succession or sale of a funeral home.   Kumming has been in the finance end of funeral service for 16 years. He started in 2007 with Keystone which was soon purchased by S ervice C orporation International , an acquisition resulti...

Samuel Perry, assistant lecturer of mortuary science at Southern Illinois University Carbondale , teaches  green funeral practices to future funeral directors.   Perry came to funeral service having started as a groundskeeper for his local funeral home in high school. It wasn't until he started working as a funeral director, though, that he realized he wouldn't be able to implement his plans for m...

Jennifer Wright-Berryman, associate professor of social work at the University of Cincinnati, was looking into death care in stigmatized circumstances when she turned her attention to how funeral homes interact with LBGTQ+ people. She found the industry lacking in her initial research into whether funeral home websites were LGBTQ+ friendly. FSI reported on her work in October 2022.  Links: Jennife...

Tanya Scotece, program coordinator for the Funeral Service Education Program at Miami Dade College, discusses teaching adults and trends in mortuary education. While there are lots of things she thinks mortuary schools do well, she also recognizes there can be gaps.  Scotece speaks at length about how she has made changes in her own program and how she hopes to see those changes spread to other ju...

Death care is changing now more than it has in 100 years. Each episode features conversations with funeral directors, cemeterians and other death-care professionals working to navigate this traditional vocation as it transforms to continue meeting each family's needs.   Funeral Service Insider: The Podcast is a Kates -Boylston production. Visit Kates-Boylston.com for industry news , events and edu...