ABOUT VANESSA ACKER

Vanessa Acker currently heads the Political Unit in the State Department’s Office of Russian Affairs.  She was previously the Department's Russian-Language Spokesperson and Deputy Director of the Brussels Media Hub. She has also served at U.S. embassies in Riga, Moscow, Mexico City, and Tbilisi. Prior to entering the Foreign Service, she worked as a crisis communications consultant in Latin America. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of Saint Thomas in her hometown, Houston, Texas. She speaks six languages and is accompanied on her Foreign Service journey by her husband and two sons.

ABOUT TRACY N. BUSCH, PhD, moderator

Dr. Tracy Nichols Busch is an Associate Professor of History at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. She earned her B.A. from Vassar College in 1991 and a PhD from Georgetown University in Russian and European history in 2004. For most of the 1990s and into the early aughts, she worked for the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and facilitated partnerships between the U.S.-Russian road sectors. Since coming to Ferris in 2006, Tracy has taught more than a dozen classes on a variety of U.S. and world topics. Apart from researching a book with the working title “Roads to Communism from the Stalin Era to World War II”, she has also been actively involved in promoting global awareness on the Ferris State campus and beyond. She often gives historical context for current events in the Russian Federation.  She is the mother of two daughters, Alexandra and Kyrah, and is married to Benjamin Busch, a stone mason, actor, poet, and Marine Corps combat veteran.