Taelar was born and raised in Muncie, IN. Not long after that, she found her eye for the bigger picture, one that guides her to this day. And she got to work soon after that. She's a keen, organized mind, guided by a soul who wants to see her community flourish in body, mind, and spirit.

Taelar has worked for nearly her whole life. When she was 13, she got her first job making fruit baskets and holiday displays at the local Marsh. Just a few years later, she helped her grandmother open a bakery, working a near-full time schedule while juggling her studies at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, & Humanities, and still maintaining a 3.4 GPA. 

After high school, Taelar moved to Lexington, KY to attend a Forensic Science program, but did not find the subject matter connected with her. Like many Americans, she cut her teeth in the service industry, where her willingness to learn and peerless work ethic saw her advance from serving, to bartending, to managing, to helping start new restaurants. Though Taelar found personal success and learned vital skills like budgeting, managing personnel, and working within bureaucracy in restaurants, she didn't find fulfillment.

When a regular customer invited her to a yoga session, what started as a way to recharge between shifts soon became a passion in and of itself. She started attending weekly, and soon found herself leading classes. While there, she was introduced to massage therapy, which she was drawn to because of how profoundly it helps long suffering bodies. As is her nature, when she found something she was passionate about, she pursued it relentlessly. Soon she was enrolled in the Lexington Healing Arts Academy, where she completed massage school amid Covid-19 restrictions. In her practice, she saw firsthand the effects of everyday life on people's bodies. A healer by nature, she relished in mending the damage and pain people have learned to quietly suffer through.

Despite her success, Taelar still was not fulfilled in Kentucky— she longed for home. When her highschool sweetheart reconnected with her, she found her way back to Indiana, moving to Franklin to be with him and marrying soon after. Once she was back, she started the city's first combined yoga and massage practice. But even still, Taelar knew she could do more as a healer and organizer. In January 2025, she attended her first protest, an event that drew a few hundred. By her nature, within two weeks she was organizing. Turnout immediately spiked from a few hundred to over a thousand under her leadership. As the protests grew, so too did the need for organization. Soon, she was routinely managing events with tens of thousands of attendees, meaning she was in charge of ensuring safety, coordinating with city authorities, and finding solutions to any incidents or conflict. But while protesting is undoubtedly important, Taelar knows what we all know deep down: real change comes when citizens decide to roll up their sleeves and get involved. When Taelar heard her neighbors describe their struggles with the trustee’s office, she knew she had to do something more than just protest— she had to get involved. 

Taelar has spent her life becoming an exceptional administrator, thinking on her feet and finding creative solutions to problems that have long been seen as facts of life. She hopes to spend the next four years using that approach to make life better for the people of Franklin.

She lives with the love of her life, her husband Nait, alongside her dog, Mercury, and her cat, Pax. You can find her protesting outside the Franklin Courthouse each Friday evening, holding office hours at the Democratic Party Offices in downtown Franklin, and at her yoga and massage studio.