As an honoree on the January 2024 Serve Virginia Honor Roll, Tracy Keller has been an ambassador of girl leadership since her teen years in Girl Scouts. There, she earned the highest award, the Gold Award, for creating and carrying out an elementary educational program on prevention of tobacco use. Now, more than thirty years later and as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast since 2005, Tracy continues to facilitate conversations that empower girls and women, and helps shape programs within her community.

Recently, Tracy embraced the challenge of volunteering as the lead for the Empowering Girls initiative for the Rotary District 7600, a district that has joined other Rotary clubs and districts internationally to embrace this key initiative that focuses on improving the health, education, well-being, and economic security of girls.

“Empowering girls means supporting them to ensure that their basic needs are met while working to transform the structures and institutions that reinforce and perpetuate gender discrimination and inequality,” says Tracy. “This initiative fits so well with Girl Scouts’ mission which is to help build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place. It is important that we empower girls, because when girls succeed, society succeeds.”

Indeed, when more women are empowered to lead, everyone benefits. Decades of studies show women leaders help increase productivity, enhance collaboration, inspire organizational dedication, and improve fairness. Despite these benefits, only 10% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. Empowering girls to pursue leadership can lead to more women leaders in our future. Tracy takes her commitment to improve girls’ lives very seriously and is quick to tell you that empowered girls become empowered women.

“Women continue to face economic hurdles, declining levels of political participation, and challenges in the workplace,” she said. “There is a tremendous gender gap and one way to address it is through supporting organizations that focus on girl empowerment.”

Tracy has always been involved in community organizations where she can share her volunteer talents and her commitment to making the world a better place. She currently chairs the Chesapeake Schools’ Parent Teacher Association’s Reflections Program, a program that provides opportunities for recognition and access to the arts which boost student confidence and success in the arts and in life. She is also a member of the Women United Leadership Society hosted by United Way of South Hampton Roads. In past years, she served in several roles on the board of the Women’s Division of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce.

“In all things I do, I bring with me my commitment to empower girls and women with life skills and education,” says Tracy. “I know from personal experience the power of sisterhood in your life. With encouragement and role models, girls can help close the gender gap—perhaps reaching that goal earlier than the predicted 2050 timeline. And by engaging boys and men as partners in girls’ empowerment, we’ll be able to reach that goal and build a better world for everyone.”