Belonging is being valued for who we really are
Tessa Day is a registered counsellor, mental health facilitator, and the founder of UK and Australian social impact initiative, Lonely Together, which explores loneliness, belonging, shame and connection.
Her extensive public-facing work has informed policy change, having been invited to share her insights at Parliament House in Canberra and the London Mayors Office at City Hall in the UK. Tessa has been featured on ABC, SBS, BBC Women’s Hour, Seasons 2 & 3 of We are Lonely Podcast, Days Like These Podcast, The Independent, and Stylist Magazine and has facilitated loneliness and mental health workshops for schools, universities, and organisations locally and overseas.
Alongside her clinical work, Tessa brings a strong commercial lens as a business owner and facilitator in leadership development, giving her the rare ability to connect emotional truth with workplace culture, leadership, and performance. Tessa has worked alongside organisations across Australia and internationally, including Unilever, Lendlease, The Salvation Army, Medibank, The League of Intrapreneurs, The Loneliness Lab, Wollongong City Council, and Escape the City. Across these partnerships, she has facilitated programs, workshops, and conversations on equitable leadership, youth loneliness, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, building emotionally resilient communities, the shame and stigma surrounding loneliness, pathways to reconnection, and building more meaningful working lives.
Tessa thinks big and small. In 2021, she published a one-of-a-kind interactive children’s book, Tiny Toro & Her Very Long Arms, to support little ones celebrate their uniqueness and encourages them to be their truest selves.
Tessa’s all about supporting others to understand belonging, authenticity, healthy conflict, and the human dynamics that shape trust, connection, and engagement. She combines her vast human-facing knowledge, clinical training, and leadership expertise with genuine warmth, compassion and a healthy dose of humour.
Talking Points
The Hidden Cost of Loneliness at Work
Workplace loneliness is not only about isolation from others, but also about losing connection with yourself, your voice, your value, and your sense of meaning. It’s the experience of feeling inauthentic, unseen, disconnected from purpose or feeling unsure that your contribution truly matters. This kind of loneliness really takes a toll. It often looks like disengagement, burnout, conflict, and poor retention, and it directly impacts organisational culture and cohesion, as well as productivity. Too often, the signs are only recognised once the damage is already being felt.The Hidden Cost of Loneliness at Work
In this keynote, Tessa Day shares how everyone can play a role in creating a more connected workplace. Loneliness isn’t just addressed through team building days and forced ‘how are you’ conversations. It’s built through deep relational understanding, seeing, hearing, and empowering the strengths within your team. Learn how to recognise your individual and collective power in building and supporting greater belonging at work.
Key Takeaways & Tangible Outcomes
- Understand workplace loneliness more deeply and recognise how it affects culture, performance, and retention
- Identify the early signs of disconnection before they become costly people problems
- Build stronger team cohesion through shared values, recognition, autonomy, and psychological safety
- Strengthen belonging, trust, and engagement through more intentional leadership and team behaviour
- Turn connection into a business advantage through better collaboration, improved retention, and a healthier workplace culture
Rupture to Repair: The Art of the Difficult Conversation
The greatest barrier to organisational growth isn't a lack of strategy; it’s the fear of friction. When teams avoid difficult conversations, micro-ruptures occur, leading to silos, resentment, and emotional withdrawal. As a registered counsellor, Tessa Day provides a masterclass in the mechanics of repair. This talk equips leaders and teams with the psychological tools to navigate conflict in a way that doesn't just ‘fix’ a problem but actually deepens the connection between colleagues and teams.Rupture to Repair: The Art of the Difficult Conversation
This session is for everyone; leaders will learn how to create a safe space, initiate constructive repair and practice accountability, and employees will learn how to communicate feedback honestly, and recognise and vocalise their needs to thrive.
Key Takeaways & Tangible Outcomes
- Equip leaders and teams to handle difficult conversations early, before silence turns into resentment, silos, and emotional withdrawal
- Build practical, evidence-based skills for constructive repair, so conflict becomes a pathway to stronger trust rather than ongoing tension
- Help leaders create safer spaces for honesty, accountability, and clearer communication across teams
- Support employees to give feedback more openly, recognise their needs, and communicate them with greater confidence
- Strengthen team cohesion, collaboration, and performance by turning everyday friction into opportunities for deeper connection and repair
Human First: Why Authentic Leadership Matters
For a long time, we have been taught that work is a place for a very specific version of ourselves. We put on our professionalism hat and leave the rest at home. Work was built around production, efficiency, and output, and many leaders came to believe that this was what made a good worker. But the research tells a different story: when people are expected to mask too much of themselves, suppress what they really feel, and function more like tools than people, organisations often lose trust, initiative, engagement, adaptability, and the kind of sustainable performance that lasts.Human First: Why Authentic Leadership Matters
We are not robots. We are human beings. And in a world where technology can increasingly take care of the repetitive, mechanical tasks, our greatest value lies even more in what is distinctly human: intuition, creativity, empathy, courage, imagination, and the ability to build genuine relationships. If we want the best from our teams, we need to create workplaces where people can bring more of their whole selves to work. And we cannot do this without authentic leadership. When authenticity is modelled, people are more likely to contribute openly, connect meaningfully, and bring their strengths to the table.
This keynote explores the powerful link between authenticity and performance. Drawing on global research and real stories of human experience, it challenges leaders to model a different way of showing up. Learn how to lead in ways that build trust, foster transparency and autonomy, and create teams where differences are recognised and leveraged as a genuine source of connection, innovation, and competitive advantage.
Key Takeaways & Tangible Outcomes
- Understand how inauthenticity erodes trust, engagement, initiative, and long-term team performance
- Learn how authentic leadership creates the conditions for greater openness, stronger relationships, and more meaningful contributions
- Gain practical ways to build team cultures that foster transparency, autonomy, and psychological safety
- Unlock more of what makes people distinctly valuable at work: creativity, empathy, courage, imagination, and genuine connection
- Build teams where differences are leveraged as a source of innovation, adaptability, stronger collaboration, and sustainable competitive advantage
