About me
A senior transportation planner with prior work in applied behavior change, Talia has dedicated the past twenty years to making it convenient, safe, and affordable for people to meet their daily needs without having to drive alone. Her work focuses on strengthening travel options to better serve communities of color, low-wage workers, people with disabilities, youth, seniors, and caregivers. She partners with communities throughout Oregon and across the U.S. to build support for practical, meaningful, and manageable improvements to transportation networks and services.
Talia grew up in close community with people with disabilities, fostering early interest in ways to adapt places and systems to welcome people with a range of support needs. Her work with youth and families surviving houselessness and intergenerational trauma introduced her to transportation's role as a critical determinant of access to lifesaving resources. After graduating with a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from PSU, she spent twelve years at ODOT working on multimodal megaprojects, long-range plans, arterial retrofits, and active transportation policy. Talia has been a student of wildfire in the west since her teens, shaping her perspective on how to help people, places, and ecosystems weather climate change and natural disasters.
