Dr. Taylor Gara is a researcher, educator, and yoga instructor whose work bridges developmental psychology, education, and the visual and performing arts. She began dancing at age 12, started teaching ballet at 18, and became a registered yoga teacher in 2016. Today, she is a modern yoga educator. She brings together movement and evidence-based developmental approaches to learning and well-being.

Since 2014, her research has explored the role of the arts in human development, with a focus on education policy, adolescent motivation, and the developmental benefits of arts engagement. Her current research examines play-based learning environments that support executive function development in young children, as well as yoga-inspired educational tools designed to strengthen children's social and emotional learning.

Dr. Gara earned an Associate of Social Science from J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, a B.S. in Psychology from Old Dominion University, an M.A. in Applied Developmental Psychology from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of California, Irvine.

Throughout her career, she has worked across research, policy, and practice. She interned with the National Dance Education Organization and later served as a research advisor to the Arts, Humanities, and Civic Engagement Lab at Texas A&M University, a National Endowment for the Arts–supported research lab dedicated to understanding how the arts and humanities promote student success, social and emotional well-being, and civic engagement. She has also served as a grant panel reviewer for the California Arts Council.

Outside the university setting, she spent four years as a program evaluator at WestEd, a national nonprofit research and development organization. There, she supported statewide California Department of Education initiatives designed to expand educational opportunities and address inequities faced by students and families in underserved communities.

Her research has been published in Research in Dance Education, Arts Education Policy Review, and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Her work continues to explore how the intersection of arts experiences, psychology, and policy shape human development across the lifespan (click here for a full list of publications).