About Dara Simkin
Dara didn't set out to become an expert in play.
She was trying to survive.
She spent most of her life not knowing she had ADHD, diagnosed at 39 after her marriage ended and her business collapsed at the same time, while raising a young child alone on the other side of the world from her family.
Her GP suggested antidepressants. She asked for an ADHD assessment instead.
What followed wasn't a neat transformation story. It was the slow, confronting realisation that much of what she had built — the hustle, the overachievement, the constant performance of competence — had become an unconscious workaround for a brain that never fit the systems she was trying to succeed inside.
Then she read a line from Dr. Edward Hallowell that cracked something open:
"If you have ADHD, you need work that feels like play."
She cried because she realised she had already built it.
For over a decade, Dara had been designing experiences around play, curiosity, experimentation, and human connection without fully understanding why her nervous system needed them so deeply.
That insight became the foundation of her work.
Today, Dara is helping reshape the global conversation around adult play, adaptability, burnout, and what it means to stay human in a world increasingly shaped by machines. Her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, behavioural science, leadership, and lived experience.
She is the Director of Organisational Play at the National Institute for Play, founded by play researcher Dr. Stuart Brown. She has collaborated on research into playful work design with RMIT University and the LEGO Foundation.
Her book Full Stack Human, co-authored with Tāne Hunter of Future Crunch, is published by Wiley in 2026.
Raw, funny, emotionally honest, and deeply insightful — Dara doesn't speak about these ideas from a distance.
She lived them.
The credentials
Track record.
- Co-author, Full Stack Human (Wiley, 2026) with Tāne Hunter
- Applied research partner, RMIT University Behavioural Business Lab, Playful Work Design
- Co-lead researcher on a global play at work study conducted across seven international organisations including IKEA, World Vision and Sesame Workshop
- Collaborator, Dr Stuart Brown, National Institute for Play
- Collaborator, IDEO Play Lab
- Keynote speaker and facilitator: McKinsey, PwC, AGL, ANZ, Chevron, KPMG, Carman's Kitchen
- Represented by Saxton, Claxton, Talent Corp, Event Speakers & ICMI
The short version for bureaus
Bureau bio.
Dara Simkin is a keynote speaker, leadership developer, and executive coach based in Melbourne, Australia. She is co-author of Full Stack Human (Wiley, 2026) and an applied research partner with RMIT University's Behavioural Business Lab. For over a decade she has designed and delivered experiential leadership programs for enterprise organisations across technology, finance, healthcare, and the public sector, including McKinsey, PwC, AGL, ANZ, and Chevron. Her work is grounded in neuroscience, behavioural psychology, and the science of play, and she is represented by Saxton, Claxton, Talent Corp, Event Speakers, and ICMI.
Why play
Most organisations treat play as a reward.
Dara treats it as the most underused performance mechanism in business — one backed by neuroscience, validated through global research and demonstrated in enterprise settings from financial services to healthcare to government.
Her argument is simple: the capabilities that make humans irreplaceable, adaptability, curiosity, creativity and connection, don't develop through pressure. They develop through play.
And the leaders that understand that are the ones who are ready, relevant and revered.