O’Mara Taylor

About O’Mara

(updated 6/2016) O’Mara Taylor is an advocate for comprehensive women’s and reproductive health education and services. For the first half of her Luce year in Indonesia, she worked at  PKBI (an Indonesian-affiliate of Planned Parenthood International) to increase youth services at a new clinic in Bantul, Yogyakarta. She moved to Jakarta in early 2016, where she spent the remainder of her Luce year working with  DKT Indonesia to revamp their pioneering social franchising reproductive health program, Andalan, which partners with midwives across the country to provide high-quality contraception at a low cost. O’Mara also worked with Rutgers WPF, a Dutch-based organization focused on increasing comprehensive reproductive health education for Indonesian youth. 
O’Mara’s international community advocacy work began during a gap year before college, when she volunteered at several non-governmental organizations in Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina. Through her work teaching sex education in the slums outside Buenos Aires and as a women’s health volunteer at a small clinic in the mountains of Peru, O’Mara began to appreciate the complexities of development efforts and became interested in community and reproductive health issues. She went on to graduate with honors from Vassar College, with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a focus in Public Health. During her sophomore summer, O’Mara worked at an inner-city health clinic in her hometown of Boston as a Summer Fellow with Health Leads, an organization dedicated to breaking the link between poverty and bad health. In college, she also sang a cappella and led the Vassar Women’s Rugby team to the Sweet 16 round of Nationals as co-captain, going on to break multiple school records and become a Division II All-American Player for the 2011-2012 season. After graduating, O’Mara worked at an environmental consulting firm for two years and volunteered with Do One Thing, an HIV and Hepatitis C mobile testing organization that worked in at-risk communities in West and Southwest Philadelphia, doing neighborhood education and testing outreach on the weekends. Before embarking on her Luce year, she worked in fundraising and programming at Primeros Pasos, a rural clinic in Guatemala, which provides medical and dental services with a focus on nutrition and women’s health. Moving forward, O’Mara plans to continue pursuing a career promoting reproductive health education and access to contraception through community-led health initiatives. When not at the office or going on field visits, she can be found hiking nearby volcanoes, playing guitar, and finding ways to add avocado to every single meal.