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Taylor is from California, where she started her research with a ten year project on pre-production plastic (nurdle) pollution in Southern California. This long term monitoring project, which she started at age 11 and completed for her undergraduate research, showed that pre-production plastic density on beaches was positively correlated with increased industrial runoff after storm events. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Marine Science from the University of San Diego (2013), Taylor worked for the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), San Diego State University (SDSU), and Hubbs Sea World as a scientific diver on kelp, seagrass, and fish stock restoration projects in temperate systems. Taylor also worked as a marine science educator in the Channel Islands for an NGO called GetInspired. In 2014, after moving to Australia, she began monitoring coral reef health on the Great Barrier Reef with an NGO, Great Barrier Reef Legacy, and volunteered for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Parks Authority (GBRMPA) and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). Taylor is currently continuing her studies on reef systems with Aleksey Sadekov and Malcolm McCulloch on coral paleoclimate reconstructions at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Her Master’s research aim is to refine coral paleoclimate (SST) proxy calibrations to more accurately understand how corals have coped with environmental changes in the past.