After graduating high school in 2008, she attended California State Polytechnic University, Pomona where she intended to major in graphic design. During her freshman year, she looked up some online forums regarding voice-over and attended Anime Expo, where she learned about and attended an Adventures in Voice Acting workshop conducted by Tony Oliver. On Oliver's suggestion that she was pretty good at it, she changed her major to theatre, and continued to take voice acting lessons and workshops while studying at school. She also did a production internship at Bang Zoom! Entertainment where she got to sit in on some of the recording sessions. Her first voice acting project was on K-On! where she voiced some incidental characters. Her first big voice-over role was for Battleship, based on the movie of the same name, where she got to voice a main character among many veteran voice actors. However, video game reviewers panned the game because none of the movie's actors reprised their roles in the game, and faulted the game's limited acting, which was relegated to mostly radio chatter and mission updates. At one point in college, she had some health issues that led her to take an absence from school and acting, so she pursued production work, which her parents thought would make for a more practical career; she later dropped it as she was encouraged by Oliver to pursue acting and to finish school. That was when she landed the lead role as Ayesha in the video game Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk. She described Ayesha as a bit airheaded and ditsy but relatable and resembles her personality at times. Video game reviewer Sean Madson of Diehardgamefan found the dub to be of decent quality, but said Ayesha "sounded a bit too obnoxious with her airheadedness." Matt Sainsbury of Digitally Downloaded thought the dub was reasonable but disliked their American accents as not suiting the Japanese personality of the game. Vince Ingenito of IGN wrote that "both the writing and voice acting fail to lend any weight to her plight. Ayesha seems about as upset over her missing sister as I might be over a glass of spilled milk, making it really hard to care about the outcome of her quest." Harlacher also voiced Sadira, a spider-themed woman and new character to the Killer Instinct series.