Tara Ilsley Murillo, MPH joined Duke University in September 2012. She is a Program Coordinator in the Duke Division of Community Health; currently focusing on mobile health text messaging interventions for the pregnant Medicaid population of North Carolina .

Tara attended North Carolina State University as an undergrad and traveled to Malawi to teach HIV/AIDS education in rural villages. After graduation she continued she work in HIV/AIDS prevention and education in Tela, Honduras leading a HIV/AIDS non-profit on the northern coast of Honduras. She served as an AmeriCorps member and a bilingual HIV/AIDS counselor in high-risk areas in East Oakland, California. Tara then began to realize the intersect of public health prevention and research and shifted her work into HIV Research and began working at the University of California at San Francisco. She assisted in the implementation of four National Institute of Health HIV Grants specifically for women to better understand the underlying molecular, cellular, and immunological basis for HIV transmission and pathogenesis in women, the research focused on microbicide gel study to learn how different types of hormonal contraceptive could possibly increase HIV infection in women.

In 2012 Tara moved back to her home state of North Carolina to begin her Masters in Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2012 Tara began working at Duke University in the Community and Family Medicine department and continues to work with the undeserved and uninsured community of Durham and specifically with the growing Latino population in North Carolina.