Tracy Zimmerman

Executive Director, North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation

Tracy Zimmerman has more than 25 years of experience working on behalf of public interest organizations. She helped create the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation (NCECF), where she serves as Executive Director. NCECF is driven by the vision that each child in NC has a strong foundation for life-long health, education and well-being, supported by the nation’s premiere birth-to-eight system.

Under her leadership, NCECF launched its signature initiative, the NC Pathways to Grade-Level Reading (Pathways), a collaborative effort bringing together the state’s early learning and education, public agency, policy, philanthropic and business leaders to define a common vision, shared measures of success and coordinated strategies that support children’s optimal development, beginning at birth. Zimmerman also serves on My Future NC, a statewide commission on educational attainment led by North Carolina’s public education systems, and was appointed to the B-3 Interagency Council.

Prior to NCECF, she led the North Carolina Partnership for Children’s (NCPC) public engagement efforts and developed the First 2,000 Days campaign. Tracy previously served as the Public Relations Director at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and as Senior Vice President at The Hauser Group in Washington, D.C., where she created an award-winning public health campaign on infertility prevention for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis. Tracy and her husband, an elementary school teacher, have two children.