Bio

Tara O’Connor brings to ARC 30 years of information-gathering and risk management experience. Tara’s expertise is pan-African built up over a career of travel and research across the continent.

Since founding ARC in 2006, she has advised at board level on pre-investment and expansion strategies for North Africa, East Africa and the Horn (as a region); the Franc Zone (as a region) South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia. As managing director of ARC she has managed some 4,000 projects in 40 of Africa’s 54 countries for some 160 clients. Recently, Tara has structured a series of multi-jurisdiction investigations into commodities theft, grand corruption and terror financing involving several African and Middle Eastern countries. Tara also founded ARC Briefing – a country report service covering 23 of Africa’s established markets which is now in its 11th year and provides subscribers with 11 years of first-hand research in these countries.

Formerly, as Managing Director of Kroll Associates’ Africa Practice, Tara ran a business unit of specialist investigators and political analysts based in London and Johannesburg. Before Kroll, Tara spent 11 years at Control Risks in several senior management roles. She spearheaded the group’s expansion in Africa before taking a similar role for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Tara’s career began as a political researcher with the Social Change Assistance Trust, a Norwegian and Commonwealth funded NGO based in South Africa, before moving into journalism. Born in Zimbabwe, brought up in Zambia, Tara studied in France before graduating from the University of Cape Town. Tara speaks and reads French.