Tara Kola

Tara Kola is a Senior Experience Researcher at Adobe, specializing in education within the Adobe Design Research & Strategy team. Her work focuses on conducting ethnographic and mixed methods research related to child and adolescent creative activities, entertainment consumption, and narrative practices both in and out of educational settings. Kola supports content, design, and product teams in making research-driven decisions, and she has a notable background in anthropology and history.12

Kola holds a Master’s degree in History from Tufts University, where her thesis examined the role of opium and medicine in South Asia during the late 19th century.5 She has previously worked as a Product Manager at Rebel Girls and has experience in various research roles, including internships at Microsoft Research and as a Human-Computer Interaction Research Assistant at the University of Washington.12

In addition to her role at Adobe, Kola is the Founder and Director of Camp Kahani, a storytelling summer camp and afterschool program aimed at South Asian youth. This initiative reflects her passion for creative education and representation in media.134 Kola is multilingual, speaking English, Spanish, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, and Chinese, which enhances her ability to conduct research in diverse cultural contexts.1