Start With A Win - How Tracy Walder Went From Sorority Sister to CIA Officer & FBI Agent - Part 2

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

The conversation continues with Tracy Walder, beginning with her recollection of her transition from the CIA to the FBI and the cultural differences she experienced between the organizations. After leaving the FBI, Tracy began teaching in hopes of inspiring more young women to pursue careers in national security. As a teacher, Tracy quickly realized foreign policy curriculum was not available to students. This discovery inspired her to build and teach a course focused on national security and foreign policy. Tracy also carries her teachings to Girl Security, a nonprofit organization committed to changing the gender narrative of national security careers while preparing girls and women for these careers through mentorship. Tracy has contributed teachings to the organization, and she is currently on the board of directors. Tracy finds fulfillment as a teacher by introducing young women to the issues in criminal justice and foreign affairs, as it initiates their curiosity. She discusses the impact of stereotypes and gender narratives for careers in these fields, which often discourages women from pursuing these job types. She reveals how femininity is a “disqualifying” myth and how women are often taken less seriously or regarded as less intelligent with this trait. Tracy hopes to instill open-mindedness and realistic expectations for everyone who wishes to pursue a career in the CIA or FBI, hoping this mindset will contribute to finding their paths to success within the organizations. Connect with Tracy:https://www.tracywalder.com/https://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Spy-Secret-Notorious-Terrorists/dp/1250230985https://twitter.com/tracy_walder https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-schandler-walder-026547130/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Hey guys, producer Mark here. Now listen, if you're just tuning in and you haven't listened to part one of this two-part episode, go back one week and listen to part one. That'll get you all filled in, ready for part two. I hope you enjoy. Every day is filled with choices.

You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. Let's talk about your next transition in life. I mean, it's, did you go, Hey, that wasn't exciting enough for me. So I think I'll go, uh, go do some FBI stuff. How'd you make that change? So for me, obviously, I mentioned earlier that I was at the agency before, during, and after September 11th. I'm sure that you all can imagine that it was a very stressful time.

Things weren't normal, I guess, as you would say. And so what happened was that typically you're supposed to be spending tours overseas. So anywhere from one year to two years. But what happened was because September 11th occurred and they needed us to be out, out, out, out, out. I did 13 different tours, you know, in a very short period of time. And that it becomes stressful on you, especially when you're young. And so I made what I thought was actually a very mature decision. I didn't leave the CIA because I was like fleeing a bad boss. In fact, I'm still in contact with all my friends. That's who was texting me before I turned it off from the agency. You know, I received many awards. I didn't, wasn't escaping

anything. I just knew that, you know, five, 10 years from then, this being overseas business wasn't going to change. That's who the CIA is. They collect intelligence overseas. And so I thought, okay, I love this counterterrorism mission, but I would like to do that stateside. So the next logical step actually was to join the FBI and become a special agent there because they worked the counterterrorism mission here in the United States. And so that's the decision that I made. Totally makes sense. So did you feel like you were starting over again? I mean, you had to go to the FBI Academy and go through redoing everything. I mean, is it hard to start over again after, you know, you did some

great stuff at the CIA and then you're like, oh, I think I'm going to begin again. Or, I mean, do you just go, it's my next step and I'm just going to continue to head down and charge forward because I'm Tracy and I'm a badass. I mean, what goes through your mind when you do that? I was excited to start the FBI. I think for me, though, I was very naive in that I assumed that the culture at the mean, I knew that. So I knew all of those things going into it. I've always been a person that like, you know, nothing's beneath me. I don't go into a job expecting sort of one thing. It's you go into the job grateful to have it and sort of work your way up through there. So that was not difficult.

This whole sort of starting over. It was the culture was what was more difficult for me. Gotcha. Okay. Here's, here's a good question for you. My 19 year old daughter, Maggie wants to go to the FBI. So she's, she's in pre-law in psychology and all sorts of other stuff. And I mean, just killing it in life. And, uh, you know, there, there are a lot of people that are in that age group that want to go do something like this, that they're not just want to serve their country, but want to have adventure and want to, you know, go broaden their horizons and see what's out there in this world, but help people, you know, they want to help people. I mean, what advice do you

have for somebody like that? Who, you know, when you, you look you look back at the U of USC and go, okay, if I knew this then, I would have, you know, appreciated that. What advice can you give to somebody like that? Do you want me to be very blunt? Be blunt. Throw it at them. Okay. Because your daughter won't like this and I'm worried that you won't either. What I get a lot from my college students, and I'm not saying that your daughter is this way, I'm just gauging it from my 18 to 21-year-olds that I have, are very unrealistic expectations of what these agencies have to offer. And that, growing up for me, the best thing that I had was no pop culture at all about the CIA and the FBI. It didn't exist.

I mean, for me, Friends was my pop culture. We didn't have any of these shows. And I get students who want to run around in Cessnas and think that the FBI works serial killers. They don't. Serial killers are usually a state crime. The behavioral analysis unit is a bunch of like old people. That's not where people want to go at the FBI. And so I think I have students who have these very unrealistic expectations. I have two students who have gone into the FBI and have since quit just because it didn't fulfill sort of what their expectations are. So my biggest job as an educator is to educate students as to what it is. You know, you will spend time working in a cubicle. There is a lot of paperwork. Every day you don't go out and arrest people. You know, in terms of helping people, yeah, I guess, you know, you're helping

taking bad guys off the streets, but you're not really dealing with it on a victim end. That's not what the FBI does. And so I think having these realistic expectations, in my opinion, are what's like the most important. I don't think they should not apply for these jobs. They absolutely should. But I think that they should be willing to have an open mind about what they're going to do once they're there and also go in with their eyes wide open in terms of, you know, what they'll be doing. So I hope I didn't offend anyone. No, no. I love that answer because I mean, it's, you're right. You've got, oh, I saw this Netflix show on B, you know, the behavior analysis unit, or it's some down and dirty work and it's not the same thing. And I also, you know, went to school for criminal justice and, and, uh, sure enough, you know,

you want to, you want to learn the truth of what the career is about. And if it's, you know, if it surprises you, you're like, Oh, wow, that's great. But I appreciate you being very, uh, very real about that. That's extraordinarily important. And now that you know, you know, and you can still make your decisions. I don't think it's because I want I want people to say I want people who get into these jobs to stay in these jobs. Right. Not be upset that they're not flying around in Cessna as part of the SWAT team and those kinds of things. You can be at some point, that's great, but it's just not gonna happen like that right off the bat.

That's not how this sort of works. And so I want students to understand that. Exactly, I'm with you. So, all right, so you get out of the FBI and you start teaching. Is that why you wanted to do that? Is to go out and help people understand what they're getting into, or maybe give a perspective that would help them when they walked in the door.

I mean, why, why'd you get into teaching? So I did go to college to be a high school history teacher. My degree is in history. Um, so I think that that had always been in the back of my mind, you know, Hey, I'm going to be a teacher. But, you know, I decided after a very unpleasant time at the FBI that I sort of found my passion. And my passion was we need more women in these careers. Right now, only about 19% of agents at the Bureau are females. And only about 22% of people in national security jobs are females. And that's not to say that males are bad. They're amazing.

My dad is the most supportive person of me. But I think we bring some things, particularly in the realm of soft skills, to the table that sometimes men don't. Men bring things that women don't. And I think we need to change that gender narrative. And like, what does an FBI agent look like? What does a CIA officer look like? We kind of need to be dispelling those myths a little bit, because I think that also keeps women sometimes from pursuing these careers. So I'm so glad that your daughter is wanting to pursue these careers. I think once I got into teaching, I realized that there was almost a void. We are not teaching students about foreign policy at all. We're not teaching them. I mean, most of my students couldn't find Israel on a map. You know, that's pretty common. This was a very elite school. And

so I started realizing I needed to create a course for these young ladies about national security and foreign policy. So I started that a while ago. And ever since then, now I sit on the board of girls security and their goal is to change the gender narrative in foreign policy, national security, and actually pair girls up with mentors in these actual fields. And they do war gaming and those kinds of things with young women. So I think I've actually, from those experiences, found my true sort of path. Well, I mean, and thank you for saying that, because that was my next question. Tell us about girls security. I mean, did you found this or, I mean, tell us the history of girls security. Where did this come from? So the founder and I found each other.

So she is a former attorney. She, she is not in national security. She's amazing. I just, she's just incredible. And it was in its infancy. So it was, you know, brand new, kind of just starting out. And she had heard that I had been like teaching these classes. And so she reached out to me and I was like, hey, you know, this curriculum you have, you really should add this and this. And she's like, wait, wait, wait, you're doing what I want to bring into, like, can you help me in terms of lesson planning and those kinds of things? and this. And she's like, wait, wait, you're doing what I want to bring into, like, can you help me

in terms of lesson planning and those kinds of things. And so that's how that kind of came to be. Okay. I, and I, I love this. So just to kind of, you know, flip the, the, the, the paradigm here a little bit. So in 1973, when Remax started,, when our company started, women were almost non-existent in real estate. And Dave Linegar, it was fascinating. They would be secretaries or something like that, which I hate that word, by the way. I mean, it was a male-dominated industry. And our founder, Dave Linegar, could not find men to come work in his, at REMAX, which were, REMAX was a real estate office, then multiple real estate offices, then turned into a

franchise organization after that. And so Dave went out and started hiring women and his merry band of women beat the pants off of all the men in the real estate industry in the Denver metro area. And that's how Remax started getting some momentum. I had no idea. It's such a cool story. And you look at it and go, I mean, that was his goal is to open up real estate to, to women, to minorities, things like that. Cause it was a white male dominated sport or white male dominated industry. And he knew that the women were better at it than the men were. And he's like, nobody's just giving them a chance. So here we go. Let's do this. So I totally agree with what you're saying. And as someone who's, I still do a lot of training in law enforcement, starting to see more women get into that from that perspective.

And you're right. The emotional intelligence, way better. I mean, just the emotional maturity, way better. I mean, there's guys, it's true. taken from you by a woman if you're not stepping up and working, you know, to develop those soft skills because women are way better at a lot of stuff than men are. Particularly, you know, how can I, you know, explore, how can I understand and work through this situation by understanding your feelings and understanding the emotional aspect of it. Because men, I mean, their egos kill their opportunities.

And I mean, granted, everybody has egos. But the reality is I see it every day. And I'm like, come on, put it away. And let's sit down and figure this out with some soft skills. So thank you for saying that. Well, it's funny that you mentioned 1973 because 1972, that was your Hoover died. And that was the year that females were finally allowed to be special agents of the FBI. I mean, I was born in the 70s.

So that's my decade. And I actually did not know until a few years ago when I started researching for a journal article that women, you know, it was 1972 was the year, which probably explains some of the gender disparity that's going on. But I think also sometimes that's frustrating that I see are women who don't want the help of men or don't want to work with men or it needs to be all women. And it doesn't like we need to learn how men bring things to the table. Women bring things to the table. We need to recognize that and then make it a little bit more equal. And just like we can learn skills from men, they can learn skills from us. And so I think it's about being partners and that not necessarily adversarial. Totally agree. We're, Hey, we're a good team. Okay. I mean, that's the reality of it. And this is something that really is important to me. I mean, I have

two daughters and my wife is just an incredible woman leader. This is something that's really, really, you know, hits home with me as well as it is a key tenant of our organization. I mean, two of my four C-suite officers at RE-MAX are women. So, and our board is 40% women. So, I mean, it's, this is something that we're all very much involved in, in our organization. How do you hope or how do you view this, you know, your efforts or this collective effort in, you know, national security, foreign affairs, international policy, things like that with girl security? Where do you see that? I mean, do you think it's making an impact or I mean, what is it? Is it on the direction you want it to see going? Or I mean, what what's what observations do you have here? I don't know that I'm making an impact. I guess maybe part of the problem is I don't have an ego. Like I think, I don't know that I'm making an impact.

I do have a daughter, but she's only six. And I think for me, it's about exposure. So what I've always thought is regardless of whether my students go into law enforcement or national security or those types of careers, I have now exposed them to problems in criminal justice, problems in foreign affairs. And then that makes them curious. Right. And so I guess that's the curiosity sort of that I had. And then I guess this sounds crazy, but on a purely superficial level, and this sounds very oversimplified, I don't mean it to be oversimplified. One thing

that I get that frustrates me the most is you don't look like a CIA officer, you don't look like an FBI special agent. Well, what is it that I'm supposed to look like, what Hollywood has created for you. You know, my femininity does not necessarily mean that I'm stupid or that I'm dumb. And I think sometimes it gets confused for that or by that. And that is very frustrating to me. I think that's enraging might be the better word for me. And why don't you expect me to achieve these things just because I'm very girly? And why? I don't understand. And so I think I'd like to just change that parody to on just a purely superficial level, which sounds terrible to say, but the more women that we see, women of color,

feminine women, not feminine, it doesn't matter. You should be able to look at someone and say, yeah, she could have that job. I mean, why does it, why do I not fit whatever your stereotype is? And I think that's frustrating. So well put. I mean, that's, I, and I like your attitude, by the way. It's, get out there and change the world. Your opportunity tomorrow is go do something, you know, do something to make a difference for human beings and do a great job of it. So, Tracy, I do have a question. First of all, where can we find you and your book? My book is at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, most independent bookstores as well.

If you'd like to support those, it is available digitally on Kindle and Nook. So if that's the route that people want to go, they're welcome to as well. I think socially I keep somewhat of a low pro box. I don't put my family out there, but I am on Twitter at Tracy underscore Walder or Tracy Walder dot com. Awesome. And Tracy, I ask everybody that's on the show a question. You know, we all have a different way of beginning our winning for the day.

And of course the podcast is called Start With A Win. My question to you, Tracy, how do you start your day with a win? I would say for me, the way that I start my day with a win is 100% working out. That is what makes me focused. Awesome. Well, Tracy, thank you so much for being on Start With A Win today.

This is a really good conversation. I encourage you. Thank you for having me. I encourage everybody to check out your book as well as Girl Security, you know, and let's do something good for each other today. You know, this is a really an interesting way of looking at somebody who's done some incredible stuff and check out Tracy's book, The Unexpected Spy. Tracy Walder, thank you for being on Start With A Win. Thank you for having me. Hey, and thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask Adam a question or tell us your Start With A Win story, give us a call.

Leave us a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go on to iTunes and subscribe, write a review, and rate the show. And for more great content, head over to StartWithAWin.com. Follow Adam on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, Start With a win.