Relentless and resilient may be the best ways to describe Tina Taylor during her Georgia women’s basketball career. Hardship was a frequent companion during her time in Athens, from the death of her father during her junior year to sustaining one knee injury after another, but Taylor absorbed every blow and kept on coming.
“When you go through things like that, you better be a high-character person,” former Lady Bulldogs coach Andy Landers said. “It’s easy to get unfocused and to get off track, and it was hard, it was hard for her. All of those things were really hard for her.
“Unless you’ve gone through that or gone through that with someone, it’s hard to describe how that knocks you off balance. But not Tina.”
Taylor was as solid as a rock at Georgia despite the challenges, and she’s been the same in her accounting career. For more than 18 years, she’s worked with the accounting firm Ernst & Young, and currently serves as a partner in EY’s Private Client Services division in Houston, Texas. She works with high net-worth clients on complex tax issues and tax efficiency strategies.
Taylor is one of the three 2023 recipients of the UGA Arch Award, presented by Piedmont Bank. The Arch Award highlights and celebrates former Bulldogs excelling in the business world, whether they’re entrepreneurs and business owners or, like Taylor, working at high levels in major corporations. The other recipients are former football player Greg Bright and swimmer Samantha Arsenault Livingston.
“I’m so appreciative of being acknowledged for the work that I have done at EY, and the fact that I was a student-athlete that had an opportunity to be a part of the Georgia family and to be somewhat successful in business,” Taylor said. “To be recognized, it’s really an honor, and very humbling.”
On Oct. 26, 2004, Georgia announced that Taylor, then a sixth-year point guard that had already endured multiple knee injuries, had suffered a torn meniscus in her left knee early in the Lady Bulldogs’ first preseason practice. The injury would require surgery, which would be Taylor’s fifth since January 1999. Her playing career was done.
“My Georgia career didn’t go the way that I’d hoped and planned, but on the flip side, it actually did prepare me for now. And for that, I am grateful,” said Taylor, who earned her bachelor’s degree in 2003 and her master’s in ’05.
Always driven to get back, always willing to fight her way through each surgery and grueling rehab, Taylor kept trying to play. Until, finally, perhaps mercifully, it was time to stop. But she never stopped being the best teammate she could be, Landers said.
“Someone might be having a tough day, and I can remember her crutching over to that person and standing beside them during practice and talking them up,” Landers said. “Tina was one of the most popular players with her teammates that we ever had, and it’s because of that. She’s out there trying to be as positive and being as positive as she can with her teammates. They loved her for it.”
Taylor credits her family, teammates and her faith for helping her deal with each challenge she faced.
“My parents taught me about being resilient and the importance of finishing what you start,” she said. “With the support of my parents, coaches and teammates, I had an incredible network that supported me through the tough days.”
Through all of her challenges as an athlete, Taylor always believed “that God has ordered my steps. His plan has been one that I could never imagine, and I am grateful for the journey.”
The determination that she directed toward basketball and her recoveries, the same determination and focus that she applied to her academics, didn’t leave her when she hung up her Nikes. Taylor turned her full attention to doing what she’d wanted to do all along.
“Not just that determination, that joker’s as sharp as grandma’s kitchen knife,” Landers said with a laugh.
Taylor came to Georgia wanting to be an accountant and never wavered.
“There wasn’t any changing of majors. You did know she was going to be a really, really good accountant some day, but you didn’t know where that would take her or what her desire would be with that,” Landers said. “And as I’ve watched her — every time I talk to her, I ask her to loan me some money [laughs], because she is a star in that world out in Houston, Texas.”
Taylor said there was an accounting class in high school that she really enjoyed, “and I thought maybe this could be something that I would want to do.” Doing an internship in Athens while she was in college confirmed for Taylor that she had clearly found the right field for her.
“I just knew that that was something that I wanted to do,” she said. “I always knew that there would always be a need for an accountant, so part of my goal was I wanted to find a job or a career that I knew would be sustainable, that there would be a need for.”
In 2019, Taylor was named one of UGA’s 40 Under 40 honorees. In 2022, the Terry College of Business named her one of its Terry Trailblazers, which recognizes diverse alumni that are achieving success in business and also making a meaningful impact in their organizations and communities.
Along with her success at EY, Taylor has endowed a scholarship program in honor of her late father for girls basketball players at her former high school in Longview, Texas, and served as a mentor in the Houston area.
“Even now, you still go through challenges,” Taylor said. “Every day is not going to be your best day, and it’s about how you get through them. I tend to pull from those experiences that I had back at Georgia to deal with those challenges.”
