Tracy Staedter spent a 25-year run in science journalism, including a formative stint as managing editor at MIT Technology Review.
Then burnout hit.
What followed was a deliberate pivot: informational interviews, community organizing, and value-driven experiments that led her to FoodRight’s Good School Food Advocate program and climate work with the Urban Ecology Center.
In this candid Q+A, Tracy shares how newsroom skills translate to advocacy, how to pair data with lived experience, and why empowering others with freedom and purpose is the engine of lasting change.
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Looking back on 25+ years in science journalism, what have been your biggest highlights and proudest moments?
One of the biggest highlights of my career was working as the Managing Editor of MIT Technology Review. I had just one year of management experience under my belt when I was hired, but the editor thought I was a good fit. He took a risk on me. I waded into unfamiliar territory and built processes from scratch. I did an excellent job for the magazine and learned and grew so much. I was forever grateful for those four years.
You wrote on LinkedIn about burnout, which most people experience at some point in their careers. What were the first reliable signals that told you it wasn’t just a rough patch but time to exit?
The burnout started with a layoff. I and my entire team were let go in an instant. I turned to freelancing and it was stressful having to build out the client base. At the same time, the industry was taking a dip and the pay rate for writers was low. I was making LESS as a writer than I’d been making 10 years prior. I worked day, night and weekends just to keep my head above water.
After about four years of this, plus a household move from Boston to Milwaukee, I finally landed a part-time job at Marquette University. It was wonderful. I had the best boss ever. But the damage was done. I’d pushed myself to the brink. Writing became harder and harder for me. It felt like I’d used up all of my creative juices. I kept asking myself how much longer could I do this?
I started fantasizing about doing something else entirely. The path was unclear, but the desire was there. I didn’t want to let people down, though. I also really liked the people I worked with. It’s quite rare, I think, to feel like you’re really part of a team. But at some point I had to face the facts.
In your advocacy work, how do you communicate data while working to energize and move people?
I try to connect facts and data with people’s experiences, with what’s going on in Wisconsin, or with my own personal experiences. In advocacy work, it’s often not about the facts, but about the real-life impact on people’s lives.
Tell us about your Good School Food Advocate role: Where do you see the highest-leverage interventions and what does success look like in a year?
The Good School Food Advocate is part of FoodRight, an organization whose mission is to empower children to make healthy food choices by teaching them how to cook, grow, and prepare nutritious, unprocessed plant-based meals.
FoodRight is also working to change the food/snacks MPS serves or provides to their students that are filled with sugar and saturated fats. I aim to be a part of that effort. In a year, I hope to see all events at the Urban Ecology Center leaning into plant-based options. I hope to have a job with Greener by Default and be actively working to shift food providers to plant-based options.
You’ve stewarded grants and communications for municipalities and nonprofits. What’s your playbook to move projects forward?
For me, it’s all about listening and responding and being a part of a team that’s committed to the response.
Chairing the Urban Ecology Center’s Climate Committee, how do you convert “zero emissions/waste/water” from a goal into a roadmap?
We work to identify issues and especially opportunities and then use criteria established by the committee to prioritize opportunities to focus on that align with UEC’s budget and values. We then make recommendations to leadership based on our findings.
From managing editor roles (MIT Tech Review, Scientific American Explorations) to Seeker’s digital velocity: what did those environments teach you about building resilient creative teams?
Let people do what they’re good at. Don’t micromanage. Give people the freedom to express and take risks. Reward them when they do, even if what they did wasn’t a home run.
What small experiments, conversations, or constraints helped you navigate uncertainty?
I’ve felt so much uncertainty in the last couple of years as I thought about shifting away from journalism. I did a lot of informational interviews. I spread myself thin volunteering with a few different groups to see which was a better fit. Sometimes I felt like I was all over the place. Unfocused. In the last year, though, my future is more clear. The best thing I’ve done is show up to meetings, to advocacy events, and workshops about how to build power. I’ve also been fortunate to have a supportive husband.
Career highlight reel time: which piece or project—journalism or advocacy—best captures your voice and why? What would you do differently if you made it today?
I’m really proud of a piece I wrote that started out as a random invitation to go “camping with wolves.” It’s called She Heard the Call of Wolves. If I could go back and do things differently, I wouldn’t change this story but I would change the kind of reporting I did in the early part of my career. I would do more on-location reporting, which is what I thought I would be doing with my career, but then life happened, and I made different choices.
What skills from your experience in writing and the newsroom have translated most powerfully to community organizing and advocacy?
At my core, I’m a communicator. Storytelling is essential for community organizing and advocacy. People on the receiving end of injustice are anonymous until they tell their story. As a science journalist, I conveyed complex ideas in ways that regular folks could understand. I continue to do that in my work explaining the harms around industrialized agriculture.
