Tara Massimino serves as Senior Managing Director at McAllister & Quinn. She works with a diverse array of clients across practice areas to assess their organizational needs and capabilities, and partners with them to identify funding opportunities that align with their strategic priorities and goals. She counsels clients on funding strategy and all aspects of the external funding process and directly manages the delivery of proposal development support services.
Prior to joining McAllister & Quinn, Tara served as Director of Research Development at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine (2015-2021). During her tenure, she developed growth strategies driven by external funding for biomedical research and healthcare. She established a research development service unit, implemented a federal grant boot camp program which yielded more than $40M in new grant funding to the campus, co-led a joint effort with UCI Health and state agency officials to secure $30M to improve health outcomes for chronically ill and medically underserved children, and facilitated an institutional partnership with the U.S. Navy for trauma skills readiness.
Tara began her career in Chicago, IL. Over a ten-year period, she served in various roles at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (2005-2013) and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (2013-2015), providing leadership and operations support for sponsored programs. Her work involved administration and oversight of multimillion dollar funding portfolios and encompassed the lifecycle management of all phases of sponsored programs, with a particular emphasis on funding opportunity identification and development of competitive proposals to government, foundation and industry sponsors.
Tara holds a B.A. from Loyola University Chicago and a M.A. from the University of Chicago. She is a native of St. Louis, MO, and currently resides in Orange County, CA.