Every Living Thing Is Designed To Be Adaptable

Passions

Adaptive Leadership in Complex Environments

Tara shares a bit of fun brain science and lessons from her NASA experiences to inspire leaders to be highly adaptable in the most complex environments. For the sake of survival, humans are designed to prefer predictable, stable conditions, but this isn’t how things work in life and in business. The good news is that our brains are designed to get better at adjusting to novel situations! Tara shares stories, science, and examples of how to rewire your brain daily in the context of creating highly adaptive leaders.

Student Motivation Keynote Speaker

Tara grew up in southern Louisiana and was the first in her family to graduate college. As an undergraduate, she stumbled upon the McNair Scholar program, who took her in and taught her how to compete for entry to graduate school. Now she enjoys speaking to university students and young women and girls in STEAM who are looking for someone who can motivate them to push through the adversity, obtain that degree and land that dream career. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year is going to come no matter what! What will that look like for you?

Leadership Principles from Spaceflight

Tara gets asked pretty often: how do NASA leaders do the hard things? There are five specific characteristics of NASA leaders that create the culture of safety, integrity, excellence, teamwork, and inclusion in the space family. Tara shares these characteristics along with stories and examples from her 20+ years working in the International Space Station program, where resource management and collaboration are fundamental to this successful international endeavor.

About Tara Ruttley

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Mom • Wife • Space Scientist • Neuroscientist • Engineer • Archaeologist • Entrepreneur • Inventor • Aquanaut • Science Communicator • Astronaut Finalist
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Tara Ruttley is a keynote speaker who empowers others to better adapt to any situation by helping them understand how their brains process novelty. She teaches her audience about the biology of what happens to us in new situations, and how intentionally seeking out novel situations will rewire their brains to actually embrace their biggest challenges.

Tara has spent her career at NASA in Human Exploration, where adaptability is everything. She is also a neuroscientist and knows that the brain literally changes for the better when we have a new experience. We live in a limitless universe with seven different continents, nearly 200 different countries, more than 7 billion people, thousands of cultures, and hundreds of thousands of unique experiences, but mostly we stick to our daily routines. Yet even the tiniest bit of exploration (even in our own offices!) can make us better able to adapt to change, overcome fear and adversity, and improve creativity.

Tara enjoys meeting new people and learning new things, and she’s had over a decade of experience in media appearances giving light-hearted, informative, and inspirational keynotes to audiences ranging from undergraduates to career scientists and corporate professionals.

Tara holds degrees in Biology, Mechanical Engineering, Neuroscience, and Anthropology-Archaeology. She has publications ranging from engineering to neuroscience and archaeology and holds a US Utility patent.

Visit her Facebook page to interact or her YouTube playlist for examples of some of her media:

Dr. Ruttley’s detailed bio and CV can be found here: https://tararuttley.com/bio

Some of Dr. Ruttley’s videos can be found here: YouTube Playlist

Dr. Ruttley also enjoys working with speaker agencies, particularly Gotham Artists

TedX Houston Talk on Science Communication (edited for brevity)

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