Tamika is the recipient of Today's Inspired Latina Woman of the Year Award and in November of 2020 she also inspired Wintrust Bank's Super Hero Award for her Acts of Kindness! This is evidence that she puts heart into everything she does!

 

Tamika serves her community primarily as a second-grade Dual Language teacher. Nothing is more gratifying to her than teaching her students to be bilingual, biliterate and bicultural and infusing them with a passion for learning.
 

She is also the former owner of a Liberty Tax Service.  Tamika had the tenacity to purchase a tax franchise and in one month found a location, built it out, hired and trained employees without ever having prepared a single tax return in her life and she did all this while she had a full-time job as a school teacher!  In 7 years, she grew her client base exponentially before selling it to pursue acting. 

As an actress, she has been fortunate to play several leading roles by inspiring Latinx playwrights.  She feels that acting allows her to serve humanity by raising cultural awareness, invoking thought, and raising consciousness in the hearts and minds of audiences. Her acting career became the catalyst for sharing her life stories as a playwright and co-author for the book series, Today’s Inspired Latina Volume III: Life Stories of Success in the Face of Adversity published in May 2017.  Her first play The Nuyorican is currently being workshopped and hopeful of hitting the main stage in 2022, due to the pandemic.  She has also begun writing her next play, For The Love of Autism.  In November 2020, Tamika's story Heroes Wanted was published in Hispanic Stars Rising: The New Face of Power, a story that speaks to being inclusive of those that that are neurodivergent as well as those with special needs.  "Inclusion is not about bringing people into what already exists; it is making a new space, a better space for everyone."

These days Tamika is well known for serving the autism community as president and director of the board for The Autism Hero Project (AHP), a not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to "Preparing kids with autism for the world and preparing the word for them."  AHP also purchases medical insurance for children on the spectrum to gain access to the therapies they need to thrive and be as successful as possible.
 

Tamika served as a proud company member of Halcyon Theatre and UrbanTheater Company and former
Vice-president of the Puerto Rican Heritage Organization and dance choreographer of their Education Scholarship Pageant.