Tanesh Foster

Tanesh Foster began learning ASL at the age of 13 after being fascinated with seeing interpreters at her church. Her fascination grew into a passion and when she went off to college, she decided to make interpreting her career choice. Tanesh graduated from the ITP program at the University of South Florida and began her career.

Tanesh worked as a sub interpreter in the k12 environment for 4 years. Approaching the time that her NIC written test would expire, it forced her to sign up for the performance exam. It was nerve wrecking, but she did it. She took the test and passed! This opened up more opportunities in the interpreting field and she was then able to obtain a job in VRS. Simultaneously, Tanesh knew that she wanted to teach some day, so she decided to pursue a masters degree in higher education. After completing her masters degree, she was offered her first adjunct position at her alma mater, the University of South Florida. There she taught ASL 1 and ASL 2. A few semesters later, she was offered another adjunct position at Hillsborough Community College. There, she taught courses: Intro to Interpreting and ASL 2. Finally, she was offered a 3rd opportunity to teach at St. Pete College; ASL 2. In Addition to teaching, Tanesh was also a part of the assessment team for the state of Florida credentialing of interpreters and was the chair of the credentialing board for some time.

Tanesh moved to Georgia after getting married and had to leave those opportunities behind. However, new opportunities arose when she was approached to become the trainer for new hires in VRS plus an opportunity to begin teaching again at the University of South Florida, remotely. She was thrilled for those opportunities. Tanesh later applied to teach at Georgia State University. Once an opportunity opened up, she was contacted to join the interpreting training program as an adjunct professor. Tanesh teaches Survey of Interpreting, Service Learning, and Practicum/Internship. Additionally, Tanesh is a part of the committee that reviews applications for the ITP program at Georgia State University, is currently a part of the rating and assessments team for a major organization that must remain confidential, is a mentor for the CATIE Center Project, and occasionally mentors other interpreters locally to help them prepare for the NIC. In her spare time she enjoys spending time with her family, ordering from Amazon, decorating, planning parties, and running.

She offers mentoring in English to ASL and ASL to English. Her strengths as a mentor include: building confidence, ASL sentence structure/ painting the picture, creating concepts and signs for high register content formulating complete sentences, register match, repair strategies, and vocabulary.