About Tara Brown
Tara “Tiger” Brown has designed, developed and led innovative software development projects for 15 years. Throughout her career, Tara has always utilized bleeding-edge technology and stayed current with emerging concepts. Her primary focus has always been on excellent user experience, anywhere data access, online communities, and open platforms.
Tara recently left Topspin, a technology platform for direct-to-fan, marketing, management and distribution, where she was an Account Manager and worked directly with musicians and their staff to implement campaigns. Prior to that she was a Senior Program Manager where she designed and managed features, and kicked off the Development Partner Program allowing third-party developers to innovate on the Topspin platform.
Prior to Topspin, Tara worked at Microsoft for 8 years as a Senior Lead Program Manager, where she led software projects for Windows Live and Office Live. Projects included Windows Live Calendar, Address Book, Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, Microsoft Office Live for Small Business where she led a team that managed international mobile features and the development partner program, and Microsoft Office Live Workspace where she led a team that worked on social productivity. Her extracurricular activities at Microsoft included being on the Women’s Leadership Team, working on internal startups with other entrepreneurial women, and mentoring.
After graduating from British Columbia Institute of Technology, Tara started a software consulting company and single-handedly designed and built large Intranet and Extranet projects for Group Health Cooperative and BCAA’s 24 service centers. She lead a project team that built one of the first web-based auto insurance quoting systems – with much of the design being used over a decade later.
In her spare time, Tara has produced projects such as iPhun, an iPhone game review show, where gamers reviewed games in video and blog format. There is always time for silliness, such as Cat Workout, that was written about on CNN Health. She founded BarCampSeattle, helped organize BarCampLA and talked at conferences such as SXSW Interactive. She has been a highly sought after beta tester for productivity and social tools which helps her to stay current and engaged in the software community.