I'm Talia, and I’m from I've lived in Germany, multiple US states, and four other countries across Europe, which sounds impressive until you realize it just means I've experienced the same bureaucratic nightmare in multiple languages. Like a world tour of paperwork.

I studied Biological Anthropology at UC San Diego and Epidemiology at Cambridge, so I'm trained to understand why people do weird things and why those weird things make everyone sick. Wildly useful when you're managing research teams and trying to prevent organizational contagion.

I've spent nearly a decade in research operations. Universities, clinical research organizations, nonprofits. All powered by government or industry funding with 1,000s of strings attached. Scientists didn't get into science to write budget justifications or attend meetings about forming committees to discuss future meetings* (*based on true events). They got into it to cure cancer or understand the universe or figure out why some people can eat gluten and others explode. Noble pursuits! But then someone hands them a grant and says "Congratulations! Now manage this like a Fortune 500 company while also pipetting things."

So I do the other part. I manage projects, wrangle stakeholders (yes wrangle, these are not calm people), map processes, and translate between funders and researchers, two groups who rarely speak the same language but remain fully convinced they're having the same conversation. I'm methodical but not rigid. I actually respond to emails. And I've been known to deploy a well-timed gif when morale needs rescuing and deadlines loom.

I founded The RPM Factor because good research shouldn't stall from lack of structure and coordination. When the administrative machinery runs smoothly, scientists can do what they love. That's it. That's the whole model.

Science without the struggle.