Bio
Credentials
Tara is a global advisor to startups and has built her career helping key figures create and implement strategic plans, processes, mindsets and systems that enable them to achieve their goals in corporate, academic, government and private endeavors.
As an American living in Turkey for nearly 20 years, Tara is globally-minded and adept at communicating across cultures and facilitating strategic relationships and outcomes that cross borders and barriers. Her clients tend to exceed their goals when Tara helps them expand their vision and stay connected to their core motivations.
Tara studied Psychology at Santa Clara University and holds a Masters Degree in Information Technology Management from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. She was recruited by the U.S. Department of Defense as an Outstanding Scholar and worked as an analyst and Information Specialist for the pentagon. Tara was awarded for her role on the team that designed, built, and launched a pay and personnel data warehouse for military and congressional decision makers. Her master’s thesis documented the design and implementation process of the data warehouse and was presented at the International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems. It was later cited in a patent for a system and method used for document and data validation.
Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Tara moved to Turkey in 2002 which marked her first foray into ecommerce and global enterprise. She built an online retail business when e-commerce was still in its nascency and leveraged her experience to advise other entrepreneurs launching online. As a consultant, Tara has helped clients reach goals through the creation and implementation of strategic plans, fostering partnerships, solving problems and developing effective work systems and procedures. Tara’s plan to develop an internet-based system to advance the development of leadership capacity in women globally was awarded first place among hundreds of other submissions in a crowd-sourced competition for technology solutions.
Tara served as the VP of business development in Turkey for California tech startup Linqto, Inc., and helped the Keiretsu Forum of global angel investors implement their strategy to onboard 50+ global chapters to a new technology platform including chapters in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, South Korea, Prague, Dubai and Istanbul as well as chapters in the United States.
She is a global ambassador for the Women Get Funded program developed by a Silicon Valley angel investor. She is a graduate of the Women Leaders for the World program, and a member of international women’s organizations in Istanbul. She has advised startup founders to win accelerator funding as well as mentored them to expand their businesses abroad. She has developed a scalable methodology which helps tech accelerators and funds improve the performance of their cohorts. She serves on the advisory board for two California-based tech startups.
Tara is a certified ICF coach, graduated from the How Women Lead residential leadership program called Women Leaders for the World, and is adept at helping people and organizations turn operational requirements into workable systems. She is skilled at communicating ideas, processes and concepts across a diverse set of cultures and she does this in a professional, motivational and friendly manner. She is a member of various international professional organizations in Istanbul and Silicon Valley and works to promote leadership, development, and diplomacy through entrepreneurship, technology, culture and commerce.
