Some girls dream of being a Disney princess. Others, like Tara Willis, dream of working for Disney—and she’s made that a reality twice over.

Tara was working as an operations administrator for the Walt Disney Company and going through a lot of life changes when she decided to grab a beer with her mentor. That conversation started her down a path to pursue what she was passionate about, and she went back to college at age 30 to study electrical engineering.

Despite going through a divorce during her first semester at Long Beach City College, moving 75 miles away from campus, and commuting through Los Angeles traffic to get to class every day, she wound up top of her class. Most people wouldn’t adapt so well when faced with hardship like that, but Tara says that it was mentors like Scott Fraser who helped her be so resilient.

“It wasn’t necessarily me,” she said. “It was what others saw in me that I couldn’t see at the time.”

She got involved with MATE during her time at LBCC, which she says was an interesting experience. In community college, a team doesn’t have as much time together to learn and grow; Tara says it was all about figuring out what people were good at fast and letting them stick to it. Everyone on the team brought something different to the table, but they all had a common mission to be the best that they could be.

That’s a good lesson for when you’re out at sea, because there’s no Home Depot in the middle of the ocean. During college, Tara interned for Nautilus Exploration Program and spent months on the open water. She remembered the lessons she learned at MATE when she got creative and used a sock to create a filtered suction device so a scientist could collect samples.

Now, she still works for Disney, but in a different capacity. She’s responsible for a lot of the things that make guests’ visits to the park so magical: the computer systems that make the attractions run, special effects, and animatronic figures—her personal favorite to work with.

“MATE has given me so many opportunities,” she said. “It if wasn’t for MATE, I wouldn’t have achieved that dream I had since I was a kid.”