Alumni Profile: Tracey Watson (’10) Senior Solicitor Assistant Attorney, City of Atlanta

By Reese Lile, Sustainability Staff Writer

Tracey Watson participated in the first class of sustainability interns as a communications intern when the Office of Sustainability began the program in 2010. She knew she was interested in sustainability and decided to get involved with the Office of Sustainability her senior year as she worked towards completing her major in communications. She graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor’s degree in communications and worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in sustainability communications immediately after college. She later attended law school and earned a law degree in 2016. She now works for the City of Atlanta, GA, as Senior Solicitor Assistant Attorney. 

Tracey reflected on her time with the Office of Sustainability and how it has impacted her life and her career. 

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What was your internship title with the Office of Sustainability, and what kind of work did you do in that role? 

From what I can remember, I had a project that I worked on over the course of both semesters of my senior year. I worked on a communications campaign, getting word out about the Wake Forest off-campus shuttle program, which is much more expansive now than it was back then. So I remember creating a survey about the off-campus shuttle to get more people to use it, and I interviewed a group of students. I asked them questions like, “Do you know what the off-campus shuttle is? Have you ridden it before? How can we make it better?” I worked with Ms. DeLongpré Johnson a lot, trying to figure out the best questions to ask students and the best way to go about trying to get information about the shuttle. After I did the survey, I came back with recommendations on my findings and their recommendations on how we could better promote it among Wake students. 

What kind of work are you involved in now? 

I work for the City of Atlanta as an attorney. More specifically, I am an assistant solicitor, so I am a prosecutor in the municipal court of Atlanta. Basically, day-to-day, I prosecute misdemeanors, housing violations, and traffic cases on behalf of the City of Atlanta. I’ve been doing that for the past seven years. 

This is kind of my second career. I graduated from Wake Forest in 2010, and I went to law school from 2013-2016 and I’ve been a lawyer since 2018. I worked in sustainability shortly after college. In 2010, when I left Wake, I did a fellowship in the Office of Sustainability at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I was hired as a communications fellow in their office, and I did that for about a year and a half right after graduation. 

What kind of work did you do in your fellowship with the CDC?  

Back in 2010, sustainability was newer, so I believe the CDC had just opened its Office of Sustainability a few years prior. President Obama was in office at that time, and he had signed an executive order in 2009 that ordered all of the federal agencies to establish sustainability goals and declared the need to reduce the federal government’s carbon footprint. So the CDC opened its Office of Sustainability, and I went to work in the office as an intern. I mainly did communications in that role. For example, when I was hired, the CDC had started an internal campaign called “Go Green, Get Healthy”. It was essentially a campaign that they started to motivate their employees to be more sustainable. My role was to help plan events at the CDC campus for employees to encourage this. We would do various workshops to help educate the staff on being more sustainable. 

Beyond that, within the office, there were different employee work groups. There were some pertaining to sustainability, so any employee at CDC who was interested in being more sustainable and learning about sustainability could join these work groups. As a fellow, I was tasked with coordinating one of the work groups that researched how you can make meetings and conferences “greener.” For example, this might mean looking for more sustainable caterers or event planning companies. So, I primarily worked on creating these guidelines for how to make your meetings and conferences more sustainable. 

Beyond that, I did a lot of different things, working mainly with the communications department. I know I was behind their Twitter account that promoted the “Go Green, Get Healthy” program. I would write different articles on the internet, including these things called “Sustainability Superstars,” where we would highlight employees within the agency who were doing good work and furthering sustainability.

How do you think your internship with the Office of Sustainability influenced your life and your career? 

I definitely think that having interned in the Wake Forest Office of Sustainability helped me get my position with the CDC Sustainability Office. I think they saw that I had experience working in sustainability, and it kind of gave me that push to actually get the job. I did that for a little bit over a year and a half, and then I kind of transitioned to health communication. I moved to a different department within the CDC and became a health communication specialist. In that position, I helped develop campaigns and marketing materials that educated people about public health issues. I did that for a while, and then I went to law school, and now I am an attorney! 

What kinds of skills did you learn from your internship with the Office of Sustainability that you carry into your career today? 

One of my biggest takeaways was the problem-solving skill and critical thinking skills I acquired. In my internship specifically, I knew we had this off-campus shuttle, and I had to figure out how to bring people’s awareness to it. And more than that, the internship introduced me to what sustainability truly is. Being in a leadership role in the Office of Sustainability made me more mindful and helped me develop some lifelong sustainable habits. 

Do you have any advice for fellow Demon Deacons and future alumni as they embark on their career journeys? 

My advice is not to worry too much. Everything will fall into place when it’s supposed to fall into place. If you feel like you need to take a break, you can take a break. You can take your time and do things at your own pace. Especially for college students: you don’t have to have it all together. When you’re coming out of college, you are young and you have time to figure out the right path for you.