Tamalie's interest in space design sprang from her early memories of moving around the East Coast with her first-generation immigrant family. Nurtured and protected by family, community, and physical spaces, she paid close attention to her surroundings, noting their variety. Today, she finds purpose in serving stakeholders (humans, animals, environment) throughout a design's life cycle and beyond, honoring the safety, support, and freedom she enjoyed.

After attending a Technical Public High School for Engineering, Tamalie continued her studies, first majoring in architecture and later adding infrastructure and planning at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). In her work, she sees the power of architecture and design to transcend physical space and inspire and represent the values of those they serve. An architecture that accommodates present-day requirements and unforeseen future needs can also ignite cerebral messages and emotions.

Tamalie is passionate about the applications and impacts of building systems and technologies, especially as they relate to water collection and utilization. As part of a semester-long team project presented at Pratt and NJIT, she helped develop a Green New Deal approach to collect and utilize 100% of rainwater at the building, site, and city scale.