About Tracey
TLC's career has zigzagged wildly, with the predictability of a tipsy sorority gal during rush week.
Her first love-at-first-sight was with a microphone at a college radio station. She'd gone into the radio station for an interview to write news stories and, in a twist of fate, found herself hosting the radio show 20 minutes into the interview.
She knew radio gigs paid poorly, so with her freshly-minted BA in English, she moved to New York City, envisioning a boho creative life.
The artsy public relations job in NYC was surprisingly, wildly dull and remains the least creative endeavor of her long career. When she learned that the PR firm paid college men 80% more than women , she left in a huff.
(Lessons learned: don't quit if you don't have another job on the horizon, don't quit if you have a new kitten to feed, do finagle a way to be laid off so you'll be eligible for unemployment.)
Desperation set in and she begrudgingly interviewed for a research assistant job at Bear Stearns. It seemed like a horrible workplace for a math-averse, tree-hugging liberal. One year later, she had her stockbroker's license and was tasked with making the squawk box "more interesting."
She returned to her beloved microphone.
Her pithy stock market commentary led to TV guest shots, which led to a syndicated radio gig with NBC. Which led her to financial journalism and international syndication.
She married and her new husband invented a telephony-based bed & breakfast search engine (a la Moviefone), so she ditched corporate life and moved into an old farmhouse to be an entrepreneur. As the internet caught fire, she taught herself coding and turned the telephony app into a full-fledged data-driven search engine.
She missed the city and, shazam, she was hired to return to financial journalism to host the
Dawn Patrol, a snarky financial podcast. Then September 11th happened.
TLC packed up her poodle and drove from the Atlantic to the Pacific, settling in the Seattle area in 2003. For the first time in her life, she had absolutely no plan.
She went to Bikram's yoga college, taught hot yoga for over a decade and wrote a book about the yoga college experience. (The pervy yoga guy on Netflix? Yep. That one.)
(Can I still buy the book? Sure!)
Somewhere in her 50s, a tightly-wound yoga studio owner scolded her after class.
"Stop making the students laugh; just teach the yoga poses. If you want to tell stories, then do it at The Moth."
(Lesson learned: sometimes the largest, most-irritating grain of sand can produce the loveliest pearl.)
TLC had no idea that there were such things as storytelling events, where she'd be invited to come on stage and talk into a microphone, with a topic of her choosing.
TLC's has been a featured storyteller at Mothers on Mic, NW Folklife, Story Collider, Fresh Ground Stories, and 7 Stories in Burien. Her stories have been featured on NPR, KUOW, and KEXP.
She's performed at six Moth GrandSlams at the oh-so-marvelous Seattle Town Hall.
Seattle Town Hall 2025
Outrigger Canoeing with SAKE
fancy emcee hat @ NW Folklife
When not on stage, TLC enjoys hot yoga, swimming, and outrigger canoeing with Club Sake. She's also hard at work preparing herself for when her twin daughters head to college next year.