Taynara Possebom grew up on a farm located in Southern Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. Growing up on a farm aroused her interest in agriculture but that interest further developed when she finished high school at the Federal Institute of Rio Grande of South – Sertão Campus (IFRS) which is an agriculture technical school. She did several internships at Embrapa Wheat (like the USDA in Brazil), and it motivated her to pursue a BS degree in Agronomy at the University of Passo Fundo (UPF). During her BS. degree, she assisted at Dr. Panizzi’s lab developing research on stink bug behavior in agricultural crops, which was a huge motivation for her to continue studying and learning more about entomology in the world. After that, she challenged herself to move to the US and she spent a year at the University of Nebraska -Lincoln (UNL) with Dr. Tom Hunt and Dr. Justin McMechan studying soybean gall midge. Taynara thoroughly enjoyed all the research internship opportunities that evolved entomology combined with agriculture because the continuous challenge posed by insects to growers and the complex set of strategies to control them spurred her interest in a career focused on entomology. Her interests brought her to continue her education and pursue a master’s degree focused on entomology at Dr. Dominic Reisig’s Lab at North Carolina State University (NCSU).