Tracy Hancock
Department of Agriculture
2020 fellow
Tracy is the Director of Knowledge Management and Communications (KMC) in USDA Forest Service with Research & Development. She oversees national program areas in science communications and delivery, patents and technology transfer, history, data quality and archive, information resources management, web services, and the Natural Inquirer science education. She is also the Designated Federal Official for the USDA Forestry Research Advisory Council.
As the acting Deputy Director of the USDA Forest Service National Partnership Office, Tracy helped negotiate a memorandum of understanding for a public private partnership between the USDA Forest Service and The Coca-Cola Company focused on watershed health and restoration. Tracy also detailed for the Congressional Research Service.
Before joining the USDA Forest Service, Tracy was a hydrologist at the United States Geological Survey. She coordinated water-quality monitoring studies related to agricultural management practices. She also served on the National Water Quality Monitoring Council, where she initiated and distributed a national newsletter, the “National Water Monitoring News”, to thousands of water monitoring professionals. Tracy began her federal career 26 years ago in Research and Development with the United States Geological Survey, where she obtained a U.S. Patent (No. 6,013,254) for a microbe, Aminobacter ciceronei sp. (Strain IMB-1) with relevance to agricultural sustainability and mitigation of ozone destruction.
Tracy is an alumna of the University of Delaware, where she received a Bachelor of Science in geology with a minor in chemistry, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she received a Master of Science in earth sciences. Tracy is also a recent alumna of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Senior Executive Fellows Program and the Graduate School USA Executive Potential Program.
As a WHLDP fellow, Tracy’s focus is on the Lab-to-Market CAP Goal and works closely with key Office of Management and Budget and agency stakeholders.
