Create an experience with Tenille Bentley

Tenille Bentley is an internationally multi-awarded businesswoman, innovator, speaker, author, musician, sound therapist, educator and wellbeing innovator whose work is centred around one clear intention: bringing peaceful solutions through innovation.

Her work has never sat neatly inside one category, because the problems she is trying to respond to do not sit neatly inside one category either. Across education, emotional literacy, therapeutic sound, leadership, film, research, technology, podcasting, clinical collaboration and philanthropy,

Tenille has built a body of work that asks how people can understand themselves earlier, regulate their nervous system more gently, communicate what is happening inside them, and stay deeply human in a world that is changing quickly.

Before building this current body of work, Tenille had already established a substantial business and leadership career.

She built a seven-figure technology company in under 2 years, with earlier public bio material describing that business as reaching $2.5 million, and she has served as a non-executive director across multimillion-dollar private and publicly listed Australian organisations, often as one of the youngest and only women in the room.

Her board and advisory work has contributed to strategy, governance and the early adoption of digital and social media across major organisations.

She has also spent time learning from internationally recognised thinkers and leaders, including Richard Branson, Oprah, Deepak Chopra, John Demartini and Don Miguel Ruiz, experiences that helped shape the way she now brings together business, emotional intelligence, spirituality, leadership and human behaviour.

Tenille’s business and leadership work has been recognised through The Australian Leadership Award, recognised by the Australian Prime Minister and awarded to only 20 Australians each year; the Australian Financial Review’s Top 100 Women of Influence in the Business Entrepreneur category; induction into the Western Australian Women’s Hall of Fame by the Governor; Telstra Business Woman of the Year State Finalist; and State Finalist and top 3 recognition in the Australian Institute of Management Excellence Awards. These awards sit alongside her international recognition in music, film and sound, giving her work a rare mix of commercial credibility, creative courage, governance experience, social impact and wellbeing innovation.

Her approach is practical, but it is also deeply personal, shaped by her Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Polynesian Islander, French and English heritage, her early life in Takapuna, Aotearoa New Zealand, and a lifelong sensitivity to the relationship between culture, sound, emotion, spirit, community and the body.

The pathways for this work now move through several connected businesses and projects.

Through ELMA Education, Tenille supports emotional literacy for children, families, educators, schools and workplaces, with programs designed to build empathy, self-awareness, emotional regulation, communication and the human skills that become even more important in the age of artificial intelligence.

ELMA is built as a prevention model, giving children and communities emotional language before distress becomes harder to hold, while also supporting educators with practical tools they can use without needing to become therapists. Graduating thousands globally with specific works done in India with great results.

Through her speaking and workshops, Tenille works with organisations around transformational leadership, psychological safety, trust, emotional intelligence, wellbeing and the human side of technology.

She is not positioning herself as an AI technician; her work sits in the human layer of AI, helping people and organisations strengthen the qualities technology cannot replace: discernment, communication, emotional regulation, ethical judgement, connection and trust.

Sound is another major pathway in Tenille’s work, and it is one that draws on both her musical background and her interest in the nervous system.

Before her later business and education work, Tenille had a life in music: she played in orchestras, worked as a professional singer, travelled Australia as a musician and grew up around performance through a father who was in the public eye through music.

That musical foundation eventually became something more therapeutic. As founder and creative director of En Coda Orchestra 432Hz, Tenille created a 15-time award-winning sound and wellbeing orchestra that brings together classical music, 432Hz tuning, therapeutic sound, musicianship, science and embodied listening.

 Her work with En Coda has involved neuroscientists, musicians, sound practitioners and researchers exploring how sound may affect stress, anxiety, emotional regulation and the body’s experience of safety.

That musical and sound pathway has received international recognition. En Coda’s awards include wins at the International Sound Awards Film Festival in Prague for Best Male Director, Best Australian Music Video, Best Classic Music Video and Best Editing; Munich Music Video Awards wins for Best Live Performance and Best Sound Production; International Future Sound Awards wins for Best Editing, Best Documentary, Best Sound Production and Best Classic Music Video; and Euro Music Video Awards wins for Best Male Director and Best Production.

Tenille’s collective sound and art projects have also reached international cultural platforms including Nuit Blanche Paris at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris and the Palais de Tokyo Museum Square, as well as Techism exhibitions in Florida.

This part of her work is not simply performance. It is part of her wider exploration into how music, frequency, stillness, breath and the body may support human wellbeing.

Tenille is also the co-creator and executive producer of Does Sound Heal, the internationally recognised documentary created with Dom Giorgi and Joe Branco. The film brings together researchers, scientists, sound therapists, composers, musicians and people with lived experience to explore the question of how sound and music affect the human body and mind.

Does Sound Heal has won Best Oceania Film, Best Sound Design and Best Producer at Cannes World Film Festival; Best Feature Documentary at the New York Film and Cinematography Awards; and Best Feature Documentary at the Hollywood Discovery Awards.

It has also been a finalist at the WA Screen Culture Awards, received an Honourable Mention for Best Director at the Red Movie Awards, screened nationally across Australia and the United States, and had a special appearance at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel. Together with En Coda 432Hz The Film, Tenille’s film and sound work has been recognised across 23 international awards and honours.

Her work is also moving into practitioner education and clinical-adjacent spaces through the Institute of Sound & Frequency, therapeutic sound training, hospital conversations and emerging collaborations with people working around trauma, cancer, veterans, stress, illness and emotional distress.

Tenille's interest is in where sound can sit responsibly alongside established care, particularly for people whose nervous systems are carrying fear, grief, trauma, stress or overwhelm.

Psychotherapists in the UK have used her therapeutic sound work with trauma patients in clinical settings and reported strong responses, including one practitioner describing what she experienced as “100 percent cut-through” with some patients.

Tenille treats that as meaningful practitioner observation, not as a clinical claim, and sees it as a reason to keep asking better research and practice questions.

Her earlier philanthropic work through The Global Good Foundation also remains an important part of her story, although it is separate from ELMA Education. Through that 10-year project, Tenille supported families impacted by domestic violence and disadvantage, reaching more than 40,000 children across 5 countries.

That work shaped her understanding of prevention, children, emotional safety and the need to give people tools before pain becomes crisis. 

Today, that same thread continues through ELMA, En Coda, Does Sound Heal, the Institute of Sound & Frequency, her keynote speaking, mentorship and her role as co-host of the Spiritual CEO Podcast.

Across all of these pathways, Tenille’s work is grounded in the same human question: how do we build peaceful systems inside ourselves, our children, our organisations and our communities, so that innovation serves the human being rather than pulling us further away from ourselves?