Tara Turkington

Tara Turkington, CEO of Flow Communications & Flow Travel

Tara founded Flow Communications (www.flowsa.com) in 2005 in a spare bedroom in her home. Since then Flow has grown into one of South Africa’s best-known marketing and communications companies. Flow has completed work in more than 30 countries and has won more than 60 awards to date.

Flow is 67% women-owned and more than 70% of its staff complement of approximately 70 people are women. The Board and management team are also majority women.

Tara has won many accolades, including being an awardee of the International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC) in 2017, along with her sister, Tiffany Turkington-Palmer, who is Flow’s Managing Director. The same year, she was featured in the prestigious Mail & Guardian’s 2017 Book of South African Women, as one of South Africa’s most notable women.

In 2018, she was a participant in the acclaimed global EY Winning Women program, for exceptional women entrepreneurs. In 2019, Tara won the Best Individual Influencer Marketer of the Year Award at the prestigious New Generation Digital and Social Media Awards. In 2021 she and her management team were admitted to the prestigious Stanford Seed Transformation Program, which recognizes Africa and India’s leading entrepreneurs.

Tara is a member of the Women’s Presidents Organization and Flow is certified women-owned company by WEConnect International.

Tara holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Montana, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Cape Town, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

In the early part of her career, Tara was a journalist and university lecturer. She is passionate about women in business, wildlife, photography and travel, and in 2019 launched a sister company to Flow Communications, Flow Travel (www.flow.travel). She is often asked to speak at conferences and has been on the judging panel of a number of high-profile awards.

Tara lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, is married to a school headmaster and they have four children.