About Tara

Tara Engels Richards is the daughter of a retired USAF fighter pilot/aerospace engineer and a high school English teacher. She grew up and attended school in Warner Robins, GA. She attended college at the University of Georgia and graduated in the spring of 1999 with a Bachelors of Science in Agricultural Engineering with an emphasis in Operations Management. She married Michael Richards, a telecommunications manager with Cox Communications, in 2005. That same year they purchased property and settled down to raise a family in Flowery Branch. They are both active in the local community and stay busy playing tennis and running after their 17 month old son, Brady.

Tara has over 10 years of professional engineering experience in the land development industry. She currently works as a Project Manger for Rochester & Associates, a 43 year old family owned survey and civil engineering firm in Gainesville, GA. After several years in the industry she took and passed the national engineering licensure exams to become a licensed Professional Engineer. She continued her professional education this year by passing the LEED Professional Accreditation exam. LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system, providing verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

Her Military Background

During the time of the September 11th attacks, Tara was working on several environmental projects that required her to be listed as a certified hazardous materials responder. A USAFR recruiter came calling for people who could respond to the nation's anthrax scare. As a second generation military brat, it was difficult to say no to serving one's country. So in the spring of 2002 after completing her training, Tara was appointed as a 2nd Lt in the USAFR BioMedical Science Corp. Captain Richards currently serves as the Officer in Charge of the Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight of the 315th AMDS out of Charleston AFB, SC. With this squadron she has been part of deployments and humanitarian missions, most recently to El Salvador providing health care and education to remote villages across the country.

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