She is originally from Chicago, but her hometown is Boise, Idaho. She is in the process of completing her PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from Indiana University. Tanya's primary research interests are socio-phonetics, sociolinguistics, and laboratory phonology. Her current research focuses on socio-phonetic variation in Chilean media speech using accommodation theory. She is also interested in childhood bilingualism (and multi-lingualism), and acquisition of Spanish by native speakers of Chinese and Japanese in Spanish-speaking countries.