Her recent foray into entrepreneurship as a family-owned small business has also given her firsthand appreciation for the importance of legally robust entity formation as well as the complexities of multi-member LLCs and equity transfers.

Gaia holds an MBA in Leadership from the University of Washington, where she served as President of the MBA Association, and she earned her Bachelor of Science in Design Management from the Art Institute of Portland after completing early studies in Psychology at Reed College. She has received several notable accolades throughout her career, including being named to the Inland Business Catalyst Magazine's 20 Under 40 list for her tenure as founding Executive Director of the Inland Northwest Aerospace Consortium. Gaia has dedicated nearly a decade of her career to university partnerships and remains passionate about bridging the gap between academia and industry.

For fun, Gaia and her husband (a design engineer from Austria) host an annual Oktoberfest celebration at their farm in Snohomish, Washington, where they raise free-range chickens and a growing flock of Dorper sheep. When not at the farm, Gaia can be found cheering for her son at his middle school baseball games or visiting friends and family in Europe.