Tara grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area before pursuing a degree in Wildlife and Biodiversity Conservation at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Here her love of the outdoors grew exponentially. When she wasn’t in a lecture hall, bio lab, or out on the trails, you could find her perched under a tree watching birds or kneeling in the grass identify plants. After graduating, Tara worked as a Botanical Technician for a survey project in the Carrizo Plain before becoming an intern with the National Park Service at Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, California. Here, she used her extensive botanical knowledge to monitor California native plants on the rangelands, conduct rare plant surveys, manage a native plant nursery, and fix the occasional barbed wire fence. After a year of living and working in a rural National Park, Tara made the trek down to San Diego to purse her teaching credential. By chance, she was placed at High Tech High for her student teaching and has been here in different roles ever since. Currently she is teaching physics!