Tara Black

Regional Ambassador, Victoria

Tara started working at the age of thirteen, first for her Aunt and Uncle and then with local small businesses in the restaurant industry. Entrepreneurship, leadership, collaboration, and feeding people have been the critical deciding factors for each career choice. In 2009, she co-founded Origin Gluten-Free Bakery. Fourteen years later, she now solely owns and operates her business with an incredible team of talented people and loves what she gets to do each day. Tara recently earned her MBA in Executive Management and Leadership from Royal Roads University in 2022 to gain fresh skills and a deeper understanding of how businesses and their leadership need to develop to thrive in the future.

Tara’s work experiences have been rich over the last thirty years. She has worked in camps, small and large restaurants, iconic hotels, family-owned cafes, large retail and wholesale bakeries, and catering companies. She has performed in positions as low as a prep cook and junior server to an Executive Pastry Chef for a four-diamond property and now is the CEO of her company. Her technical expertise and leadership skills in the culinary industry are honed and sharpened. However, as an entrepreneur over the past fourteen years, the depth and breadth of knowledge for business acumen in tactics, strategy, implementation, mentorship, and puzzle solving is what she loves engaging in every day.

Tara has been working with WeBC since the concept of Origin came to mind, and the organization has been fundamental in helping Origin achieve its success to date. She started as a mentor with WeBC in 2015 and has loved working with creative women that want to add to their communities and families while building unique businesses and facing challenges. As a Regional Ambassador, Tara is excited to connect with more women, and women lead businesses and work on creating integrated relationships that support our resilience and tenacity. She has also been recognized and nominated numerous times as a leading woman in business in BC and Canada by WeBC.

Tara enjoys working alongside her adult children, who live with her and all of their animals in Victoria, BC.