Job By Day, Jazz By Night: How To Work A Career With Passion

Monika Ruggerino designs jewellery but loves to spend her downtime singing.

Australian Financial Review Magazine, 2025

Monika Ruggerino is a goldsmith and jewellery designer. She’s 37 and lives in Sydney.

When did you start singing?
I’ve always sung. I had private tuition for a decade. Then, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to study at the Australian School of Music while completing my year 11 and 12.

Did you consider it as a career?
Yes. But I saw a lot of music students ahead of me who were then, and are still now, fighting to make a career out of music. I was nervous about the pressure of making my voice my career. That’s when I moved over to [jewellery], I suppose. I come from a family of four generations of working in gold and silversmithing. Jewellery has always been something I lived and breathed, and I really fell in love with that.

Where do you sing now?
I sing in my husband’s restaurant [Verde, in Sydney] maybe once a month. My studio is upstairs. I’ll sing at private functions there, either amplified or a cappella. Sometimes we organise a few musician friends to play, too. I’ve also sung at countless weddings, funerals, birthdays. I’ll sing to anyone who will listen!

What do you sing?
At weddings and, sadly, funerals, people will often ask me to perform Ave Maria. It’s so beautiful in church acoustics. There is also a beautiful Italian operetta called Vergin, tutto amor, which is about a woman mourning her lover, but the build is beautiful.