Tara Lal

Tara Lal was born in London in 1971 but moved to Sydney Australia in 1995. She is a professional firefighter with Fire and Rescue NSW and PhD candidate at the University of New England. She is the recipient of an Australian Rotary Health scholarship and a finalist in the Rotary Inspirational Woman of the Year Awards (2017). Her own lived experience of suicide combined with her work as a member of the peer support team at Fire and Rescue has led her to her research which focuses on understanding the impact of suicide on firefighters. She is a Mental Health First Aid instructor and professional speaker. Standing on my Brother's Shoulder's is her first book. Her vision, through her research, writing, speaking and teaching is to change the public narrative around suicide in such a way that individually and culturally we start to turn towards, not away from the deeper questioning that suicide elicits about what it means to be alive so that we can better support people to find their meaning and purpose in life.