Tracy Johnson

Tracy is a cultural anthropologist turned human-centered design expert. As Senior Program Officer, User Experience & Innovation at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Tracy is responsible for creating a vision for how to best apply human-centered design across the Foundation’s portfolio of investments. Before starting her current position Tracy was Director of Ethnographic Research at nurun, Inc. a global, digital design company that designed products, services, and platforms based on state-of-the-art data science. She has over 15 years of experience translating ethnographic insights to inform strategy in environments and subjects as varied as digital technology, media consumption; telecommunications and health care; consumer research on wellness; and gender analysis and international development. Throughout her career she has lived and worked in Asia, Europe and North America. She received her PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in New York.