In 2010 Teng won the Miss BC World contest[9][10] and the pageant's online People's Choice Award.[11] In 2011, she was crowned Miss Canada.[12] She won the Miss World Canada pageant in 2012, and represented Canada at the 2012 Miss World pageant,[3] although she did not place as a finalist in the Beauty with a Purpose segment of the competition[13] or as a top 30 quarter-finalist.[14]
Teng was inspired to begin working against human trafficking when, at age 16, she moved to suburban Vancouver and met a neighbour whose daughter had been lost to human trafficking when she was 14 and prostituted by the girl's then-boyfriend.[15]
In October 2010, Teng met with Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to discuss human trafficking.[16] In November 2011, Joy Smith and Bruce Stanton, Assistant Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, hosted a reception in Teng's honour, at which she gave a speech to Senators and MPs about human trafficking.[6]
Teng participated in "Buying Sex is Not a Sport", a campaign during the 2010 Winter Olympics.[11] After participating in Toronto's second annual Freedom Walk in March 2011, she organized the Freedom Week campaign in the Lower Mainland, British Columbia with Todd Hauptman.[4][12][17] That August, she participated in the Ignite the Road to Justice Mission Tour, beginning in Vancouver.[18][19] The tour continued across the country eastwards.[16]
Teng participated in an anti-human trafficking task force in her hometown of Langley, British Columbia, producing a report on measures the community could do to tackle it.[20] In April 2012, Teng and Hauptman presented Langley Township with an "action plan" and asked the township to accept the plan's first two stages, dealing with prevention and education.[21][22]
In June 2011,[26] Teng visited towns and slums in Cambodia and Thailand where families had sold their daughters to sexual slavery.[16][19][27] These included Patpong, Thailand where she partnered with Rahab Ministries Thailand to spend time with female human trafficking survivors.[28]InChiang Mai, Thailand, Teng spoke to an audience of 40,000 people at the MTV Freedom Concert in support of MTV EXIT, a campaign to end human trafficking and exploitation.[8][29] The Cambodia trip was supported by the advocacy group Traffic Jam[8] and World Orphans.[29]
In February 2012, Teng was a keynote speaker at the Freedom and Honor Conference in Seoul.[27] Later in the year, she travelled to Sri Lanka. There, she visited World Vision's development programs in Thanamalvila Divisional Secretariat and Bogawantalawa to help fundraising efforts.[30]
Teng currently works as a life and style blogger and is the B.C. director of the Joy Smith Foundation, an organization which serves to combat human trafficking and help survivors.[15][31] She also works as a spiritual embodiment coach in Vancouver working within the 'Deconstructing Faith movement'.[32] Her book, Your Body is a Revolution: Healing Our Relationships with Our Bodies, Each Other and the Earth will be published in 2023.[citation needed]
In 2011, Chatelaine named her one of Canada's "Hot 20 Under 30" women.[33] In 2012 she was one of 30 Langley residents to receive the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.[23] That same year the Joy Smith Foundation recognised her work in human rights by giving her its International Freedom Award,[24] and she was added to the Catalyst Conference's Young Influencers List.[34]
Teng married husband Chris Yamauchi in May 2013.[35] They had two children together.[31][36] In November 2019, she announced that her marriage had ended and she had been living as a single mother for a full year.[37]
Since her divorce, Teng has come outasbisexual.[38] She left mainstream Christianity due to the scrutiny she faced as an Asian bisexual woman.[32]
In November 2021, she announced that she and her fiancé Anthony Lively are expecting a child in 2022.[39]
^Mainse, Ann. Tara Teng (Television production). 100 Huntley Street. Archived from the original on February 3, 2014. Retrieved October 2, 2022.
^ abGoldby, Dylan; Sanchez, Daniel; Lamers, Matthew (March 20, 2012). "'Girls Are Not For Sale'". Groove Korea. Archived from the original on November 11, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2022.
