KEYNOTE SPEAKER: TRACY WALDER

How does a blonde, Jewish, sorority girl from California end up hunting terrorists in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and how does she end up in Dallas, teaching at an all-girls school? In her new book, The Unexpected Spy, Tracy Walder explains how she happened to meet a CIA recruiter at a jobs fair and was recruited by the agency while a student at USC and a Delta Gamma sorority sister.

After she graduated from USC, Tracy would spend the next five years as a covert operative for CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, assuming aliases, thwarting terrorist attacks, and hiding in the trunks of cars on her way to debrief terrorists at black sites.  Tracy worked as Staff Operations Officer (SOO) at the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center Weapons of Mass Destruction Group. During her time at the CIA, Tracy traveled to Afghanistan, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Morocco, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and England.