Tara Srinivasan became one of the youngest people to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2022 and Everest Base Camp in 2024. She’s wrote a book, done 90-minute solo dance perfrmances at prestigious Indian temples, led a workshop at SXSW EDU, started a non-profit and is the subject of a documentary out on PBS in TK. And she’s only 16-years-old and prepping to embark on her junior year at Westlake High School.
Tara’s discipline was honed through dance. Since she was six, she’s trained in the classical Indian dance Bharatanatyam, culminating in a 3-hour dance performance at the age of 14 called an Arangetram. She’s studied ballet, jazz, hip-hop, lyrical, and contemporary since 2014 at Alisa’s Dance Academy, where she performed with the top company, Austin Dance Elite and she’s currently on Westlake High School’s award-winning dance team Hyline. She says dance has had a positive impact on her mental health and presented a 90-minute experiential workshop at 2025 SXSW EDU called Jive to Thrive about these techniques. For this workshop, she shares, “I coined a mnemonic called PESoMind that encapsulated these experiences - P stands for the Physical Activity that you get from dance, E stands for the Emotional storytelling that happens in dance, So stands for the Social connections that you make while dancing and Mind for the mindfullness that you experience in dance.”
Since 2023 she’s been involved with The Kindness Campaign Leadership Program this year she won TKC’s pitch summit. She says via TCK she work her passion project called PeakPower, a non-profit that was inspired by summitting Kilimanjaro at 13 and Everest Base Camp at 15. “The non-profit supports porters on Mt. Kilimanjaro and others that carry headloads by delivering bioengineered harnesses to reduce stress on their bodies and by raising funds for education to increase their earning power,” she says. She says, “I also volunteer for TKC community projects such as Community Day, book readings and other community activities to help deliver on the mission of TKC and I recently founded the TKC Club at Westlake High School where we are aiming to promote awareness for TKC and to spread TKC values around kindness and empathy among the student community.”
Tara’s recently released book For I am Me and I am Strong is expected to be released this month. She says, “It’s a heartfelt story for kids ages 7 to 12 that follows Tara as she navigates the challenges of growing up in America while trying to embrace her two worlds: Indian Bharatanatyam dance and Western dance. Through her journey of self-discovery, she learns the power of staying true to her passions and authentic self. This book shows young readers how perseverance and embracing who they really are can help them shine and grow into the strongest version of themselves!” The theme in For I am Me and I am Strong is also captured in the soon-to-be-released documentary Centerstage, where Tara is the principal subject.
Looking ahead, the accomplished teen says, “I would like to pursue a career where I can also make an outsized societal impact. That could be potentially starting off in the medical profession, but I would like to evolve that or anything else I do into a social enterprise at scale.”
You can keep up with Tara at https://www.tarasrinivasan.com/