Tara Roberts is a storyteller, adventurer, and traveler.

In 2022, Tara was named the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year. She spent the last few years following, diving with, and telling stories about Black scuba divers as they search for and help document slave shipwrecks around the world. Her goal is to reimagine and reframe the origin story of Africans in the Americas and to tell stories that humanize and bring empathy, nuance and complexity to their human journey. Her journey was turned into a National Geographic-produced podcast called “Into the Depths” and featured in the March issue of National Geographic. Tara became the first African-American female explorer ever to be featured on the cover of National Geographic.

Tara was also a Fellow at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. She worked as an editor for CosmoGirl, Essence, AOL, EBONY and Heart & Soul and edited several books for girls. She founded her own magazine for women ‘too bold for boundaries.’ And she spent an amazing and fulfilling year backpacking around the world to find and tell stories about women social entrepreneurs. This journey led to the creation of a social enterprise that supported and funded the big ideas of those female change agents, a stint running communications for Ashoka and time coaching social entrepreneurs for Red Bull’s Amaphiko Academy.