Tani Austin

Vice Chair

Tani Austin, Vice Chair at Starkey, has served the hearing healthcare industry for more than 35 years. She maintained her own hearing aid practice for 10 years and served as the Illinois Department of Public Health Practicum Examiner for licensure of hearing aid dispensers. She was also Secretary of the Illinois Hearing Society and on the National Board of Certification in Hearing Sciences.

She has a deep-rooted passion for helping those in need, and for her, that starts with giving everyone education and access to hearing healthcare. Named Female Philanthropist of the Year and honored at the First Ladies Summit at the UN General Assembly in 2015, Tani has volunteered much of her time over the years to Starkey Hearing Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity. The Foundation is the world’s largest hearing healthcare charity and has touched the lives of individuals in more than 100 countries around the world.

Tani and her husband, Bill Austin, Owner and Chairman of Starkey, have traveled with the Foundation on countless hearing mission trips. Their relentless efforts have helped it become a global force in empowering local communities to develop simple, scalable, and sustainable community-based hearing healthcare systems in more than 70 countries to date.

The Foundation opened Starkey Hearing Institute in Zambia to help meet the growing need for more hearing healthcare professionals in Africa. The Institute provides year-long, accredited, professional ear and hearing health education, including hands-on training in direct care delivery.

With the 2021 launch of Starkey’s corporate social responsibility program, Starkey Cares, Tani continues her commitment to helping communities in need receive invaluable hearing health resources. Through a partnership with Special Olympics International, Starkey Cares is assisting thousands of athletes with disabilities around the world receive hearing health resources they may not have access to otherwise.

Tani serves as co-chair of the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Rocket Fund, an advisory board member for the PACER Center, and a trustee for the Kenya-based Beth Mugo Cancer Foundation.

In recognition of her impressive work, Tani Austin was named a 2023 Women in Business honoree by the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal.