Tara is a first-year PhD student in the Graduate Group of Ecology at UC Davis. Her main research focuses on behavior and decision-making processes that influence a community’s adaptive capacity and resilience to hazards. Tara has an interdisciplinary background in engineering, ecological science, and social science. Before starting her PhD, Tara worked as a water resource engineer in San Francisco Bay, a science communicator in Belize and Ireland, and a wilderness therapy instructor in Idaho. Tara earned her bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Santa Clara University and her master's in Human-Environment Systems from Boise State University. In her free time, she can be found climbing up a mountain, attempting to make bread or spinning tracks on her radio show.