Tara Highbaugh (b. 1980), of St. Albert, Canada, has served in the United States Marine Corps since 2006. Tara Highbaugh was born 11 June 1980 in Alberta, Canada. Highbaugh’s parents were from Indianapolis, Indiana and her family moved back there when she was eight years old. They later then moved to Atlanta, Georgia where Highbaugh attended Shiloh High School. After graduating in 1998, she enrolled at Georgia College and State University in Mildgeville, Georgia. At the age of 26, Highbaugh decided to join the U.S. Marine Corps. She did her basic training at Parris Island in South Carolina then Marine Combat training in Camp Geiger in Jacksonville, North Carolina. She then received more training at Camp Johnson, Jacksonville, North Carolina. Highbaugh’s first duty station assignment was at Marine Corps Air Station, Iwakuni, Japan. She was there for three years and worked as a fiscal clerk, working with budgeting. In the middle of this assignment in Highbaugh was deployed to Iraq for seven months. She was with an engineer support battalion and did route repair on damaged roads. She was also part of a program called Team Lioness that would use female marines to help gather intel from female Iraqis. After Japan, Highbaugh volunteered for a special duty assignment as a security guard for U.S. embassies. She was trained in Quantico, Virginia for six weeks before having a three-year long assignment. During these three years she was in Lagos, Nigeria, Mexico City, Mexico, and Columbo, Sri Lanka. Highbaugh then volunteered to be a part of the program that first integrated women into active combat roles in the Marine Corps, Ground Combat Integrated Task Force. At Camp Geiger Highbaugh underwent rigorous mortarman training. The task force undertook devising best practices for training and integrating woman into active combat roles. When this study was completed, Highbaugh went into the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and assisted marines to get into the training school they wanted. Her next assignment was as a recruiter. First, she was in Raleigh, North Carolina where she would go out to schools and meet with kids trying to recruit then into the Marine Corps. Then she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina where she took over as head of a recruiting office there. When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, it made recruiting much more difficult because there was not real way to meet with potential recruits in person. As of 2021, Highbaugh was stationed at Camp Lejeune as a supply chief for Combat Logistics Battalion 6.
