Tara Chavez

Quality Assurance and Testing, Specialist, US Forest Service

Tara Chavez lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and works as a quality assurance tester with the US Forest Service. Having lost her sight at the age of three, she feels that blindness is all she knows and identifies with. She earned a Bachelor in linguistics from the University of New Mexico and participated in an on-site training program with the Forest Service in 2012. Tara is a mother of two and a guide dog user who currently serves as the second vice president of the New Mexico affiliate of National Federation for the Blind.

QA at the Forest Service

The US Forest Service is an agency of the US Department of Agriculture that oversees 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. Since her 2012 training, Tara has held several positions in the department, beginning in case management and worker's compensation. Later, she spent six years working in the safety office and in information technology for accessibility testing.

In March of 2020, she assumed her current role as Quality Assurance and Testing Specialist. Her duties in this role include assessing the accessibility of department documents and uploading content to the department's online database. She works closely with four other specialists.

Job Field