Mrs. Tanya Laird received her Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2010. After doing structural design work in the offshore oil industry for several years, she taught at Houston Community College and the University of Texas at Tyler from 2015 to 2018. In 2016, she received Houston Community College Teaching Excellence Award. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering and Wood Science at Oregon State University. Her research involves investigating mass timber products and the effects of moisture and biological deterioration on their seismic performance.