Dr. Tachiani Russo Tate is an assistant professor in the Cellular Biology Department at the University of Georgia where she leads the Access Lab. She has a BA in Cell Biology from the University of Hawaii at Hilo and an MS in STEM Cell Biology from San Francisco State University. Her lived experiences as a first generation to college, immigrant, Latinx biology student in the U.S., her subsequent work with students from minoritized backgrounds in STEM motivated her to pursue scholarship in the field so that she could contribute to the larger body of knowledge on using asset-based and justice-oriented approaches for STEM education.