Tania de Jong AM
Most organisations talk about innovation and treat creativity as a workshop activity, not a leadership capability. The result is incremental change, fatigued teams and a culture that cannot generate new direction when the operating context shifts. The deeper question is whether creativity, inclusion and collective purpose can be designed into how a workforce actually runs, or whether they remain decorative.
Tania de Jong AM is an Australian social entrepreneur, soprano and innovation advocate who helps organisations treat creativity, inclusion and collective purpose as operating disciplines rather than cultural decoration.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tania de Jong
- A working body of evidence that creativity is buildable inside an organisation, drawn from six businesses and four charities she has founded, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia and The Song Room.
- Co-founder of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind Australia’s 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD, the first national framework of its kind in the world.
- A keynote format that pairs argument with live performance, used at Thinkers50 European Business Forum in Denmark and the International Forum on Consciousness in the United States, and tested across more than 40 countries.
- Eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, awarded Corporate Event of the Year at the global Eventex Awards, giving her direct exposure to how international leaders are framing innovation, AI, wellbeing and the future of work.
- A position on social inclusion through the With One Voice programme that is grounded in operating practice, not theory, having reached thousands of participants across community choirs in Australia.
Biography highlights
- Member of the Order of Australia (AM), 2008, for service to the arts and to music and arts enrichment programmes in schools and communities.
- Co-founder of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind the world-first 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA in Australia for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.
- Founder of Creativity Australia, Creative Universe, Creative Innovation Global, The Song Room, MTA Entertainment & Events, Dimension5 and Pot-Pourri.
- TEDxMelbourne speaker, “How singing together changes the brain”.
- Keynote speaker, Thinkers50 European Business Forum, Denmark, 2018, and the International Forum on Consciousness, United States, 2019.
- Ernst and Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year; Churchill Fellow; AGSE Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame, Swinburne University; Bachelor of Law (Honours), University of Melbourne.
Biography
Australia became the first country in the world to reschedule psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of depression and PTSD in 2023. Mind Medicine Australia, co-founded by Tania de Jong and Peter Hunt, did the regulatory and clinical groundwork that made it possible. That outcome is the clearest statement of how de Jong tends to work: a long-running campaign to change a system that most assume cannot be moved.
The same pattern runs through the rest of her record. Six businesses and four charities, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia, The Song Room and Creative Innovation Global, each built around a specific argument about creativity, inclusion or social repair. The Song Room alone has reached over a million Australian students through music programmes in schools that would not otherwise access them.
Her speaking work is unusual in form. She is a classically trained soprano who has performed in over 40 countries, and her keynotes weave argument with live singing. Thinkers50 invited her to keynote its European Business Forum in 2018. Her TEDxMelbourne talk on the neuroscience of group singing has been viewed widely and is often cited in workplace wellbeing literature.
The substantive claim underneath all of it is that creativity and collective purpose are operating disciplines. The Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, which she has run eight times and which won Corporate Event of the Year at the Eventex Awards, is the working venue for that argument across AI, leadership, wellbeing and the future of work.
Key speaking topics
- Creativity as a strategic discipline
- Innovation culture and the future of work
- Entrepreneurship and social enterprise
- Mental health, wellbeing and the neuroscience of connection
- Diversity, inclusion and collective purpose
- Leadership in disruption and reinvention
- Storytelling and performance in business communication
Ideal for
- CHROs and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing and inclusion programmes that need to land beyond the slide deck.
- Innovation leads, transformation directors and strategy teams looking to move creativity from training programme to operating practice.
- CEOs and boards in sectors facing structural reinvention, where the soft conditions of change are as material as the hard ones.
- Conference organisers seeking a keynote that combines argument with live performance and high audience engagement.
Audience outcomes
- A specific case for treating creativity as a leadership capability, not a workshop output.
- A working view of how social inclusion and collective practice change individual and team performance, drawn from the With One Voice programme and supporting neuroscience.
- An updated read on the global innovation agenda, informed by eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Forum.
- Exposure to one of the few global voices arguing for psychedelic-assisted therapy as a serious instrument of mental health policy, with evidence from the Australian rescheduling.
- A keynote experience that uses live performance to shift the energy of a room, useful for conferences that need a tonal lift alongside content.
Talks
A keynote on what humans still bring to work as AI accelerates, drawing on mental health data, neuroscience, purpose, diversity and emerging treatment options including psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Key takeaways:
- Why human creativity, connection and meaning become more, not less, valuable as AI capability expands.
- The mental health and wellbeing implications of an AI-saturated workplace, and what leaders can do about them.
- A view of psychedelic-assisted therapy as a serious clinical and policy instrument, drawn from the Australian rescheduling experience.
A keynote on the human capabilities that hold up under exponential change: agile growth mindsets, resilience and the leadership behaviours suited to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Key takeaways:
- The specific human skills that compound in value as machine intelligence advances.
- Practical moves for building resilience and adaptability inside teams.
- How leaders set the conditions for learning and reinvention at pace.
A keynote on how collaboration, diversity and purpose generate innovation, built on the Creative Innovation Forum body of work.
Key takeaways:
- Why diverse teams outperform on innovation, with practical implications for hiring and team design.
- How purpose-driven culture changes day-to-day decision making.
- What deliberate, high-quality collaboration looks like in practice.
A keynote on creativity as a board-level capability, linked to neuroscience, wellbeing, inclusion and productivity.
Key takeaways:
- Why creativity belongs on the leadership agenda, not in the training catalogue.
- The neuroscience underpinning creative confidence and how organisations can build it.
- The link between creative practice, mental health and team performance.
A keynote on the shift from shareholder logic to purpose-driven business, with case material from social enterprises and corporate partners.
Key takeaways:
- How purpose translates into commercial decisions, not just statements.
- The role of social impact in attracting and holding talent.
- Examples of organisations that have integrated purpose into operating reality.