The Australian Women's Register

The fifth of nine children of Giuseppina Raco and Bartolo Verduci, Bruna Romano migrated with her family to Melbourne at the age of 13 and completed the Higher School Certificate at McRobertson Girls High, Melbourne, in 1961. In 1967 she was awarded a Council of Legal Education Certificate from the Legal Education Committee of Victoria, and became a solicitor and barrister of the Supreme Court of Victoria in May 1968. She married a Public Servant, Domenico Romano in December 1967 and became the first woman to establish a legal firm in the ACT in mid-1968 when she established the firm of Romano-Verduci, the ACT’s first non Anglo-Celtic law firm in the Canberra region. Her husband completed a law degree at the Australian National University and joined the firm in the mid-1970s. Bruna remained head of the firm Romano and Co. until 2003. In 1986 she was appointed Honorary lawyer for the Embassy of Italy, and in 1999 graduated from the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University with an Advanced Certificate of Arbitration and Mediation. From 1968 until the 1990s she was an active member of a number of community organisations such as the Good Neighbour Council (1968-80), the Council of Social Security, the Italo-Australian Women’s Committee, the Business and Professional Women’s Club, the Law Society’s Free Legal Service, the Women’s Legal Service and she was a founding member of the organising committee of Villaggio Italiano (San Antonio Retirement Village), Page, ACT. She and Domenico have two children, one of whom is now a partner in the firm.

Bruna Romano died in December 2009, after being diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour about 14 months earlier.