Tracey Halvorsen began painting while in high school in Bethesda, Maryland. She went on to receive a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art (where she graduated with the school's top prize, the Agnes Gund Travelling Scholarship), and a MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. An entrepreneur at heart, she started her own digital design agency, Fastspot, in 1999, and grew that company into an award winning nationally recognized agency over the next 20 years. She is now a co-founder of a software startup, Return Solutions, where she continues to apply her creativity and conceptual vision, as well as her underlying passion for forging meaningful connections between humans living in today's technologically isolating realities.