Reverend Tara Welty is the chair of the Board of Directors of Ongiara Foundation. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization whose primary mission is to support the teaching, practice and awareness of Five Element Acupuncture. A Five Element practitioner with over ten years of experience, she is also a guest faculty member of Ongiara College of Acupuncture and Moxibustion in Fort Erie, Ontario.  Her practice, Great Blue Heron Healing Arts, provides Jin Shin Jyutsu, Plant Spirit Medicine, Five Element Energetic Healing and wellness education to the Buffalo community. She is a Certified Practitioner member of the American Organization of Oriental Bodywork Therapies and an ordained minister of the Circle of the Sacred Earth. She also currently holds the position of chair of the Standards of Practice and Ethics Committee for the Plant Spirit Medicine Association. Her life-long love of academics is balanced with her background in farming, viticulture, and native plants.

Tara began her practice in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in 1998. In 2007, she moved to the Buffalo area, drawn to this area by its incredible promise and her commitment to the founding of Ongiara College of Acupuncture and Moxibustion just across the river in Fort Erie, Ontario.

Tara received her BS in Diplomacy and International Security from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. As part of her degree, she studied abroad in Alsace and Moscow. She then lived in Edinburgh, Scotlaand for a year and travelled extensively in Asia. Returning to the US, she became interested in pursuing a medical degree as a naturopathic doctor. She then spent 2 and 1/2 years intensively studying science in order to qualify for entry. At this time, she also undertook training in Plant Spirit Medicine, a Five Element based therapy that based in shamanic relationships with indigenous plants. Astounded by what this form of complementary medicine had to offer, she began her practice and continued to pursue training in other forms of complementary medicine, namely Jin Shin Jyutsu and Five Element Energetic Healing. She currently has over 1300 hours of education in Five Element theory and is a certified Practitioner member of the American Organization of Oriental Bodywork Therapies of Asia.