Tracy Voigt’s work has always centered around taking care of people. Let me tell you why. 

Sometimes that meant serving in the Army. Sometimes it meant helping build infrastructure in Afghanistan after 9/11. And for the last two decades, it has meant making sure students in rural Minnesota safely get to school every day. 

Like many veterans, the environment changed, but the mission never really did. 

In the United States, May is National Military Appreciation Month, a time dedicated to honoring the contributions, sacrifices, and service of all members of the U.S. Armed Forces, past and present. In this month-long series, we’re highlighting how military and school transportation careers intersect.  

Voigt, transportation coordinator for Pierz School District in Minnesota, did not necessarily expect student transportation to become the next chapter of her life. After growing up in Augusta, Georgia, she joined the Army straight out of high school in 1985. 

“I was sent to Fort Dix, in New Jersey — a Georgia girl to the ice and snow of New Jersey — for basic training,” she recalled. 

Her early military years took her through veterinary training at Fort Belvoir, where she worked with military guard dogs, before she eventually landed at Fort Eustis, Virginia. After leaving active duty in September 1986, life moved quickly. She met her husband, a Navy servicemember, seven years after he joined, and together they spent the next 13 years moving across the country, culminating in his own 20 years of service. 

When Voigt’s family eventually settled in Minnesota after her husband’s retirement from the Navy, she decided to rejoin the military through the Army Reserves. 

Then came September 11. 

From Afghanistan to a New Mission at Home 

By 2004, Voigt was deployed to Afghanistan with the 367th Engineer Battalion, based in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Her unit’s work focused heavily on construction and logistics. 

“While I was in Afghanistan, I was a land surveyor. Our main mission was building a $1 million prison,” Voigt said. “We also built concrete pads for tents and work stations. We worked on the airfield, and we expanded base perimeters.” 

But it was the daily coordination work that stayed with her. “My main job was that I went around bargaining for supplies that we were one or two short on that other units might have available,” she explained. 

Not long after returning home, another operational challenge entered her life: school transportation. 

Her husband had spent five years as transportation coordinator for Pierz Schools after the district purchased a local contractor’s bus operation. By the time Voigt returned from deployment, her husband was ready to step away from the role. 

“When I came back from Afghanistan, he had had enough, and I applied,” Voigt said. “I believe I got the position because he could train me and not have to be paid.” 

The unexpected career move became a 21-year commitment to the district. 

Today, Voigt coordinates daily routes, activity trips, vehicle assignments, substitute coverage, and the countless moving parts required to keep a transportation department functioning smoothly. During Minnesota’s busy spring activity season, especially when multiple athletic and extracurricular trips overlap, she is often the person finding a way to make impossible schedules somehow work. 

The Same Service Mindset From the Transportation Office 

There is a calmness to the way she describes the job, but underneath it sits the same mindset that guided her military service years earlier. 

“While in the Army, I worked a lot with organizing supplies and distributing work and what needed to be done,” Voigt said. “It’s the same way with busing. You need to make sure your drivers have what they need to make their runs successful.” 

That operational mentality still shapes how she approaches leadership. “Organization, spreadsheet capability, and just the attitude that the job has to get done, you cannot drag your feet,” she said. “Students need to get to and from school safely, and helping my drivers do that is a great honor.” 

For many veterans working in student transportation, safety carries a deeper emotional weight because they understand how quickly situations can change. Voigt said her military background continues to influence how she thinks about preparedness, awareness, and protecting students. 

“Yes, in this day and age, anything can happen. We learned that in Afghanistan and my husband's military life,” she said. “To be alert to hazards with the bus, with others around you when driving, or with the student management. We have to keep these students safe and learning for our future.” 

The role has also reinforced something she believes veterans naturally bring into transportation environments: teamwork. 

“They bring organization and camaraderie with anyone and everyone,” Voigt said of veterans entering the industry. “Pulling people together to create a fine oiled working machine in [school] busing and transportation.” 

Outside the transportation office, Voigt remains heavily involved in community service through Lions International, where she served as the district governor from 2023-2024, and through her church. In 2025, Pierz School District recognized her with the Granite Ridge Conference Distinguished Service Award for her dedication to students and staff throughout the district. 

After decades of military service, public service, volunteer leadership, and student transportation, Voigt’s definition of service itself has become broader and more personal. 

“Service in giving back to any human being in need,” she said, “as well as service to others for creating jobs that fulfill a longing to take care of our country and the people that reside in it.”