Tania de Jong
Creativity, Innovation, Leadership, Diversity, Inclusion and Mental Health
Profile
Tania de Jong AM, an Australian soprano, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, stands as a trailblazer in the realms of creativity, innovation, and social impact. With a remarkable portfolio of six businesses and four charities, Tania’s journey began when, at 14, she defied discouragement from a friend and embarked on a mission to change the world through the transformative power of voice.
Her TED Talk, ‘How Singing Together Changes the Brain,’ ignited international interest and positioned her as a global authority on creativity, innovation, and collaboration. Born to a grandmother who invented the foldable umbrella and as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Tania draws inspiration from a lineage steeped in resilience, innovation, and a commitment to diversity and social inclusion.
Tania serves as an agent for change, weaving inspirational storytelling and song into transformative keynotes. Her ability to unleash creative energy, expand mindsets, and foster innovation, diversity, and inclusion is a testament to her dynamic and insightful approach. Tania’s unique background spans business, public, creative, and community sectors, enabling her to draw cross-sector themes relevant to both business and government.
For a decade, Tania curated the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific forum, a groundbreaking platform that brought international and national leaders together to navigate a rapidly changing world. Recognized with awards such as Corporate Event of the Year, her ventures, including Creative Universe and Creative Innovation Global, have consistently ranked among the top 20 event organizers globally.
Tania is not just an entrepreneur but also the visionary behind four charities, notably Mind Medicine Australia, contributing to the groundbreaking rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA in 2023 for mental health treatment. Her latest endeavour, the Umbrella Foundation, leverages music, theatre, and art to tell impactful stories and inspire generosity, diversity, and inclusion.
Creativity Australia, another of Tania’s initiatives, fosters social inclusion through programs like the With One Voice choir, recognized with the Melbourne Award for Contribution to Community. The Song Room, founded by Tania, has impacted over a million disadvantaged Australian children by providing access to creative learning and well-being since 1999.
Tania, with a Bachelor of Law (Honours) and a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, earned the Order of Australia for her service to the Arts. Recognized as the Ernst and Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Tania’s accolades include Outstanding Individual Contribution to Australian Culture, a Churchill Fellowship, and the Melbourne Award.
Her influence extends globally, as a keynote speaker and performer at renowned events and conferences, showcasing her ability to captivate audiences in over 40 countries. Tania’s passion for social change is exemplified not just in her entrepreneurial pursuits but also through her commitment to philanthropy, creativity, and the transformative power of music and storytelling.
Media
Feedback
Tania brings her own special magic to an event. She combines valuable insights with a fantastic singing voice - a truly unique experience. She electrified the 2018 European Business Forum.
Tania’s keynote address was an inspiring call to action on our individual and collective creative capacity. And I never thought I would witness our national team in full and rapturous song together. The experience left us all with a sense of unexpected elation!
This golden-voiced diva gave us all goose bumps. Her message was powerful and her never give up attitude was so inspiring. She has clearly earned her success through hard work and extraordinary talent. Entertaining and brilliant!
Tania de Jong brought warmth, enthusiasm and inspiration to our launch of Constellation - Professional Women’s Speaker Series. We were overwhelmed with the positive feedback on our selection of speaker. Tania managed to transcend our business world with her background as a lawyer, evoked compassion and understanding with her family history and encouraged us to be resilient when our dreams are shattered. She inspired us all to look for the music in our lives, let our dreams soar and our voices sing
Tania’s presentation was one of the most insightful and entertaining talks we had in recent months. The students and the professors thoroughly enjoyed the engaging talk and learnt about the power of creativity, innovation and collaboration. The importance of creativity in large corporations, the need for innovation especially in Australia and the real power of diversity are some of our key learnings we will remember and use. It was our privilege to hear her beautiful voice in the end, a perfect finish to the event. The event was a great success. A big thank you to Tania, on behalf of the students at Melbourne Business School
Your presentation “Creative Leadership - The Key to Success in Uncertain Times” was excellent, evidenced by the number and calibre of questions from the audience. You provided cutting edge public policy thinking for our Trustees. Feedback from the event has been excellent.
It was a fantastic experience to hear your speech at Thinkers 50 in Odense in 2018. You really made it crystal clear to all of us what “purpose” means and how important it is if you want to make a difference. Very impressive.
It is truly inspiring to be in the presence of someone as passionate, creative and confident as Tania de Jong. It’s her passion and outside of the box thinking that is most impressive as she takes those around her on her incredible life journey. Most importantly, it’s her incredible being that made her keynote at our conference exceptional and that’s very hard to find. It was highly interactive, engaging, and pushed people’s boundaries which was great to observe. You are an amazing person Tania so thank you for sharing your greatness with us.
Once again Tania demonstrated how well she can adjust to the needs of different audiences. For our staff conference she successfully focused on our conference themes of innovation, managing change and the importance of effective teams. As usual she managed to fully engage our group and achieved a high level of participation by all. In our post conference feedback sessions the group unanimously scored her segment as outstanding.
Thank you for facilitating our session at our Commonwealth Private Leaders’ Forum. It was wonderful you were able to join us for a focused, deep-dive session on unleashing our potential, and helping us consider different ways to get the best out of our people to build tomorrow’s Bank today. Feedback from the leaders has been really positive, and I know they deeply valued hearing your insights from working with a wide range of different leaders.
Tania de Jong is an inspiration - for her ability to engage with her audiences (even when delivering a keynote remotely); for the transformational power of her message that the ability to positively change the world is within each of us; and for a true generosity of her spirit. She is transcendent!
It was a pleasure to have Tania present her Keynote on Human intelligence 2.0 - How to adapt to change in turbulent times to create a future trajectory at the 7th Annual Women in Leadership Summit for 2021. Her energy and bubbly personality inspired our delegates to get off their feet, interact and engage with one another as she brought forth such an uplifting and invaluable session.
Tania provided the closing key-note at our virtual conference. Despite the challenges of an online format, Tania’s heart-felt presentation captivated and provoked us to think differently.
Tania made the impossible possible in this crazy time. We organised our #MOI2020 Insurance Innovation Day as a digital event instead of our planned live event in beautiful Vienna. Tania created a digital, creative Opening Keynote for us. It was amazing and everybody was so inspired by Tania’s spirit and important messages about creativity, innovation and leadership in a rapidly changing world. Thank you for this experience!
Thanks so much for being our featured guest for our one hour segment. We had great love for it on the text line. People appreciated the storytelling and the beautiful uplifting music. Thanks so much for your generosity of time and spirit.
Tania was a brilliant addition to the 2019 International Consciousness Forum, held in Madison in May 2019. Her presence brought a new dimension of light and sound to this event with her amazing voice and ability to connect personally with so many of the attendees and presenters. Her philanthropic work is truly impactful in making a positive difference in the lives of many.
Tania presented such an inspirational speech and offered opportunity to think further outside the square to motivate change and support innovation. It was a lovely way to start the day and get us all motivated and inspired. I particularly liked the discussions around creativity and innovation.
