Tara is a qualitative researcher, author and speaker whose work sits at the intersection of lived experience, research and practice. She specialises in suicide, trauma and post-traumatic growth, particularly within emergency services, and is dedicated to translating that knowledge into approaches that genuinely change how we support first responders.
Tara’s commitment to this work is grounded in her own experience of loss. She was seventeen when her brother took his own life, a death that followed the earlier loss of her mother and years of living with her father’s severe mental illness. She has written about this journey in her internationally published memoir Standing on My Brother’s Shoulders: Making Peace with Grief and Suicide.
That personal history led Tara to spend nearly two decades as an operational firefighter with Fire and Rescue NSW, working alongside the people she now dedicates her research to. She became a peer support officer and wellbeing coordinator and was awarded the Australian Fire Service Medal in 2022 for her contribution to firefighter mental health and suicide prevention. In 2021 she cycled 5000km’s across Australia to raise awareness and funds for Lifeline.
In 2024 Tara completed her PhD at the University of New England and was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal for her thesis which explored the impact of suicide on firefighters. She now serves as Emergency Services Lead at the Black Dog Institute, leading lived experience and strategic engagement for the National Emergency Worker Support Service and holds an Adjunct Senior Lecturer position at the University of New England.
As a speaker, Tara brings something rare: the credibility of a researcher, the authenticity of someone with lived experience, and the ability to hold a room through story, leaving audiences informed, moved, and inspired to act.