Diversity Spotlight: Arahni Sont
About Our Place, Our Woollahra
Our Place, Our Woollahra is a community inclusion and cohesion initiative that is proudly funded by Woollahra Municipal Council in partnership with Holdsworth. Built around three objectives – Inclusion, Participation, and Recognition – the program celebrates the people, cultures and stories that make our community what it is.
Each month, our Diversity Spotlight shines a light on a resident, local business, or community group whose story reflects the richness of cultural diversity in our neighbourhood. These are authentic voices, shared in their own words, to help us all feel a little more connected – and a little more at home – in the place we share.
This month, we sat down with Arahni.
Written by Angie Vriens
The meaning of a name, and a life of meaning
Arahni Sont has spent her life putting it to use — from rebuilding an economy at war to a quiet street in Woollahra
A name that carries meaning
Her name is the first story she tells. Arahni means princess, drawn from the Hindi maharani, or queen. It came from a book her grandmother wrote — the tale of an Indian princess raised in Australia who did not know her royal blood, and who journeyed home to discover who she truly was. When Arahni was born, she was given the heroine’s name. “It was pretty special,” she says. It reads, in hindsight, like a quiet instruction: a name given in the hope that a life would be made to mean something. Hers has been.
The work that changed a country
Arahni grew up in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, went to school in Switzerland and Holland — finishing at sixteen — and came of age across the world — an economics degree, an MBA, investment banking, the New York stockbroking floor of the mid-1980s, and then four years across Paris and Monaco. But it was Mozambique that gave her career its purpose. She arrived as the country was emerging from a devastating civil war, its economy in ruins, and stayed for ten years — working to bring in the foreign investment needed to restart it, advising the Minister of Finance and the President, and running part of a commercial bank. It was demanding, high-stakes work, and it mattered. “It was good times,” she says simply, of a decade spent helping a nation rebuild.
A life of advocacy
That sense of purpose came home with her. In 2001, after sixteen years abroad, Arahni returned to Sydney with her son Shai. Since then she has given much of herself to advocacy in the mental health and disability space — advising the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) as it was established, serving on the boards of peak bodies, and supporting mental health research and clinical services, much of it voluntary. When Holdsworth itself was struggling and at risk of closing in the mid-2000s, she joined its board and helped recruit the directors and leadership that kept its disability services alive for years. It is, perhaps, her most fitting legacy in Woollahra: a community organisation that endures because she chose to step in.
Coming home to Woollahra
For all she has done, ask Arahni what she loves most and she will tell you about her street. On View Street she found neighbours who were warm and accepting, and in 2005 she threw a garden party that some thirty of them came to. “That was really nice,” she says. “People appreciated it.” Twenty-five years on she is still in the same house, walking to Cooper Park, cycling through Centennial Park with Shai, swimming at Bondi. This year, in her sixties, she began presenting on Eastside Radio, with a dream of one day hosting a regular show from the station’s studio at the Bondi Pavilion.
Hers is not a story that hides its harder edges. For twenty-five years she has raised Shai, who lives with autism and an intellectual disability, largely on her own. But the thread running through every chapter is the same one her name promised at the start: a life lived on purpose, and put to good use. “It’s so peaceful,” she says of home. She has earned it.
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About Angie Vriens
Angie Vriens is Head of Community Programs and Inclusion at Holdsworth, leading engagement and inclusion initiatives across Woollahra. For her, the Diversity Spotlight series is about making sure members of our community feel seen and heard. Everyone carries a story worth sharing and when we listen, we discover how much we have in common and how much richer our community is for its differences.
Want to be part of stories like Arahni's?
Our Place, Our Woollahra is currently recruiting to run a Grand Friends program that brings older and younger community members together to share company, conversation and connection. Whether you have an hour a week or a lifetime of stories to tell, there’s a place for you. Get in touch with Holdsworth to find out how to join.