Tara first made her way to SMART in September 2007 as a member of the Board of Directors. Since that time, she has served as both an operations consultant and expansion analyst for the organization. Prior to joining SMART, Tara has enjoyed a wonderfully diverse career in education, most recently as a research consultant for the Johns Hopkins Center for Summer Learning. Tara has also served as the National program Director for the Breakthrough Collaborative in which she helped support the successful start up of Breakthrough programs. She spent seven years in the classroom teaching third grade at Sidwell Friends School and Brooklyn Friends School, but her education philosophy first took root when she entered the field as the Director of the Summerbridge San Francisco program at University High School. Throughout her career, Tara has nurtured the belief that empowering children and families to see the strength of their own voices, lives, values and intellect is at the heart of quality education. Tara is thoroughly committed to providing access and pathways of opportunity to many deserving young people and families so that their lights may shine in their communities and in the world. 

Tara enjoys bike riding, reading, traveling and spending time with her 5 year old son, Emmanuel. She is also an obsessive Scrabble player and loves jigsaw puzzles. Tara graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.S. in Policy and Management and is currently working on a Certificate in an MBA Foundation from UC Berkeley.