Ian Ross-Smith — Founder & CEO, Istana Ian Ross-Smith founded Istana in 2018, after more than a decade working inside one of the world's most respected private rehabilitation facilities and a lifetime's interest in why some people recover and others do not. His own route to this work was not a straight line. A career in advertising and brand strategy took him from London to Sydney, Singapore and finally Byron Bay, where he spent thirteen years at The Sanctuary Byron Bay in client services — close enough to the work of recovery, every day, to understand what helped people and what quietly failed them. He also brings something less easily learned: his own experience of addiction and recovery, which shapes how he understands the people Istana serves and what they actually need. That experience led to a conviction that became the founding idea of Istana. Clinical excellence, Ian believes, should be a given. What is not a given is the human touch — and recovery, in the end, hinges on connection rather than credentials. Istana was built to protect that: one client at a time, in complete privacy, with a clinical team whose entire attention belongs to one person. Ian writes here on the things he has seen first-hand — the particular pressures of high-profile lives, why people delay getting help, and what genuine recovery asks of a person. He is not a clinician; Istana's clinical work is led by Dr Jeremy Alford PhD. Ian's subject is the human side of recovery, which is the side he knows best.
