Tansel Ali

Tansel Ali is a celebrity memory expert most famously known for memorising two Yellow Pages phone books in only 24 days. A bestselling author of the books, “The Yellow Elephant” and “How To Learn Almost Anything In 48 Hours”, Tansel is an in-demand international keynote speaker helping thousands around the world improve their memory.

In 2012, Tansel was featured as Todd Sampson’s Memory Coach on the TV show Redesign My Brain. Todd competed at the World Memory Championships in London against the world’s very best memory athletes. With Tansel’s training and guidance for the event, Todd was able to memorise an entire shuffled deck of playing cards in perfect order and significantly enhance his memory.

An international memory athlete himself, Tansel is a 4-time winner of the Australian Memory Championships and has represented Australia at the World Memory Championships in Malaysia, London as well as national competitions in Japan breaking several memory records for Australia along the journey, which include remembering a remarkable 41 names and faces in just 5 minutes.

In 2006, Tansel was a finalist in the Australian Muslim of the Year Awards for ‘Role Model of the Year’ having mentored and coached students’ memory techniques in schools. He later founded and organised the world’s first ever School Mind Games event where through Tansel’s training, students read a 200-page book in 10 minutes, mapped out all its contents on a wall, presented the whole book back in great detail, and then memorised an 11-minute TEDx presentation word-for-word - all in the space of a few hours.

As further inspiration to the community, Tansel was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease at the age of 19 and was told he would’ve died if not for last minute surgery. He is now a Celebrity Ambassador for Crohn’s and Colitis Australia helping those with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to lead a better, happier and more fulfilling lifestyle. Tansel has also been an award-winning AFL Multicultural Community Ambassador promoting and championing diversity in Australia and now continues his work with the Richmond Football Club.

Creating value for the community and helping others is at the forefront of all Tansel’s work and his recent projects and events include creating a Chinese Mandarin language learning framework with PWC and Melbourne University, organising the Australian Memory Championships, The Where Neuron's Connect Conference, and TEDxDocklands. Tansel currently mentors individuals to create their own memory project to bring positive change in society through the use of advanced memory systems.

Tansel holds Masters Degrees in Information Technology and Business (MISM/MBA) from the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University and resides in Melbourne, Australia.