Tara is an organizational anthropologist who brings the rigor of social science to leadership development.
Understanding culture and developing leaders go hand in hand.
Leaders are constantly navigating dynamics no org chart captures — unwritten rules, informal hierarchies, and cultural patterns that shape how decisions actually get made.
With a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, Tara combines cultural insight and practical skill-building to help leaders recognize the social patterns shaping their organization and build the skills to lead with clarity and confidence.
Her perspective is shaped by experience on both sides of the table.
After teaching at the University of Chicago, Tara moved to the private sector, holding leadership positions at USAA and Meta. In 2013, she co-founded RedSquared Consulting, guiding the customer-centric transformation of Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and municipal governments — work that has tested her methods across a wide range of industries and institutions.
She loves to tech, and she most recently served as a Senior Lecturer at UT San Antonio, where she designed and taught courses spanning leadership, design thinking, the future of work, and the anthropology of food (yum!).
A leading voice on the cultural barriers facing women in leadership, she has spoken at TEDx and written for outlets including the Chicago Tribune, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Inside Higher Ed.
A passionate advocate for women in leadership
The leadership gap isn't a pipeline problem. It's a culture problem.
Tara found her voice in the conversation about women, work, and leadership the same way she finds clarity in every organizational challenge — through the lens of anthropology. That perspective reveals something most workplace diversity initiatives miss: the barriers holding women back aren't just structural. They're cultural. They're rooted in assumptions about work, productivity, and leadership that are so deeply embedded in American workplace culture that most organizations don't even know they're there.
Supporting the needs of working families isn't just the right thing to do. It's a strategic imperative for any organization serious about building a diverse, innovative, and adaptable workforce.
Tara brings this cultural analysis directly into her coaching and training work, helping organizations identify the hidden assumptions shaping their leadership culture — and helping women leaders navigate, challenge, and change them. It's not enough to tell women to lean in. The culture has to meet them there.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. . . It shouldn't be that women are the exception.”
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg