Tracy Swinton Bailey earned a Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in Language and Literacy at the University of South Carolina in 2013. She began her career as a high school English instructor, and went on to found Freedom Readers, an after-school and summer literacy program that was designed and implemented to support families in low-income areas and assist children in achieving their academic goals in reading. She is married to award-winning writer, Issac J. Bailey, and is the mother of two children.