TINA TALIERCIO

One of the fondest memories for Tina Taliercio (’05) is staring out

the window in Miss O’Malley’s grammar class. The action would

prompt Miss O’Malley to print out pictures of cute dogs with

messages like “Pay attention, Tina!” and then tape them to her desk.

“Tina was unique. She was her own person,”

longtime Sycamore teacher, Mary O’Malley,

says. “She was comfortable being herself no

matter the circumstances. She was memorable

because of her unique creative mind and keen

sense of humor.”

“When I was in Middle School, I was very much

kind of wrapped up in my own little world,”

Taliercio admits. “Ms. O’Malley had a really

encouraging way to make me stay engaged in class. She liked to give

me little notes. It was all very positive and I think that that’s why

I came away with such a positive experience, where at a different

school, it could have been totally different.”

Taliercio graduated from University High School in 2009 and

Kenyon College in 2013 with a degree in Philosophy. It was after

college that she found herself still searching for the path to her

professional passion. While seeking that which would make her

happiest, she worked in the western United States for a couple years.

“Originally, I went to college thinking I would study a creative

writing or Spanish, and I didn’t end up doing either,” she says. “I

do still love to read, and I read a lot. After college, I started working

at the outdoor industry and doing physical stuff in California and

Wyoming. I worked for about a year in California for a company that

took middle school and high school kids climbing and canoeing.

There was a little bit of a ‘what should I do with my life’ moment

that Tina thinks “most people in their early twenties go through”

so she came home and decided that she wanted to try something else. “I’ve always been interested in planes, and always interested in

flying.” Tina did an introductory flight at the airport in Fishers, and liked it so much that she signed up for lessons. “When I went out to

my on discovery flight, it was the most amazing thing ever.”

She got her private pilot’s license at Tom Wood Aviation and her

professional flight ratings through ATP Flight School. She became a flight instructor for several years before getting hired as an Embraer 175 First Officer at SkyWest Airlines, who contracts with airlines like United and flies smaller planes for them, on shorter routes.

Transitioning to a new career, especially one like

becoming a pilot, requires learning a significant amount of new information, Taliercio believes her

Sycamore experience made the process a lot easier.

“You develop really good study habits (at Sycamore),

and (with becoming a pilot) there’s so much information that we

are expected to learn and to be able to understand. In training for

this airline, it was really useful because they really throw all this

stuff at you. I had already learned how to process information,

how to actually interpret the information, and understand which is

important in the big picture.”

Taliercio says she didn’t know what she wanted to do for a career

and was willing to wait for the answer to come to her. Her advice to

Sycamore students who are headed to high school and to college,

who may not have found their passion, is a message of patience. “I

would tell students not to limit themselves. I didn’t really think that

this path was available to me until I was in my twenties,” she says. “It

was just never something that occurred to me that I could go do. If

you think you have strengths and weaknesses, the strength could get

stronger, or the weakness can become a strength. There are a lot of

options out there.”

Taliercio currently lives in Salt Lake City, Utah and still has her

Caesar’s English and Word Within a Word books. n