Amy Callahan Tracewell is currently a Corporate and Foundation Relations Major Gift officer at Pacific University, Washington County’s only four-year university. Amy has built a career around connecting people, ideas, and resources through strategic collaboration. In her early career, she worked in the publishing industry—in books and journal promotions, newspaper promotions and sales, and publisher of the Cottage Grove Sentinel, a small weekly newspaper. Through this work she was able to meet with hundreds of businesses, here in Oregon and across the nation, as a national sales trainer. She also served as Director of Cottage Grove Community Hospital Foundation where she created a collaborative, community-led initiative around community health. During her time in Cottage Grove, she also was recognized for her community work with several awards; she received a three-year Community Fellow designation through The Ford Family Foundation and was chosen as a recipient of Lane County’s 40 under 40 leadership award. Amy has served on the Cottage Grove Chamber of Commerce board, sat on budget committees, ran for Mayor (and lost), and involved herself in helping to create vitality wherever life takes her. 

 

Amy is currently the incoming chair of Pacific University’s Staff Senate and she is also serving as a Commissioner on the Forest Grove Public Arts Commission. Amy believes in the strength of individuals, the grit of small communities, and the power of collaboration. 

 

Amy lives on the edge of town in Forest Grove, a quarter mile from the rolling foothills of the coast range. Amy has three stepchildren, two small dogs, one fat cat and enjoys creating art in her spare time, even though she still hears her dad’s voice saying “don’t quit your day job!”