A person of many accomplishments, Tamara Lee Childs is a past and present CIRI Foundation scholarship recipient. In addition, she has been a Cook Inlet Tribal Council scholarship recipient through the Tribal Higher Education Program, where she has taken college credit classes and received tutoring. Both helped her to complete her undergraduate degree at the University of Alaska Anchorage.   Childs is a CIRI shareholder born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. She is of Tlingit, African American and European heritage. Her mother was originally from Sitka, part of the Katlian family. Her clan is Wooshkeetaan and her house is the Shark.   Childs is an administrator at the Ernie Turner Center, the residential and outpatient alcohol and drug treatment center. Through the state, she is a Chemical Dependency Certified Counselor 1, and is very interested in substance abuse treatment and related mental health issues. Her own eight years of sobriety inspired her to help those who are also struggling with addiction issues.   She attended Bartlett High School and received her G.E.D. in 1977. She went on to receive both an associate and bachelor's degree in human services from UAA. She has gone on to pursue her master's degree in psychology through a distant learning program at Walden University. Once she completes her masters, she looks forward to working on a Ph.D. in psychology. Eventually, she'd like to work as a clinician at a residential treatment center.

In her spare time, Childs competes her race car at the Alaska Raceway Park in Palmer, Alaska. Her drag racing career started when she met her husband, Jay Childs, 15 years ago. He was already an established racer when he introduced her to the sport. Much to her surprise she loved the sport of drag racing and three years ago got her own race car. According to Childs, drag racing may appear to be just another high-speed sport, but it makes great demands on those who participate.   "The psychological aspects of drag racing are complex because it takes so much focus to drive the race car to the best of your abilities; you have to really learn how to center yourself," Childs says.   Whether drag racing or pursuing educational goals, Childs has learned that it is important for people to face their fears, because more possibilities open up. While working on both her degrees at UAA, she said, "I had to face my fears when I went to college and I do each time I drag race. From this experience, I learned to put my fear behind me and not in front of me. This relates to my college experience. The more I learned, the more I realized what I didn't know. Each time I reached a goal, I thought wait a minute, I don't want to stop here, I want to keep going forward. When I decided fear had its place as long as it wasn't in front of me, I knew that I was going to make it."

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