Tracey Madden-Hennessey, the visionary leader behind New Britain’s Early Childhood Business Incubator, is the recipient of the 2025 Teree Caldwell-Johnson All-America Leader Award!
Tracey will join the National Civic League in Denver to accept her award as part of the 2025 All-America City Award event.
Tracey is being recognized for her leadership of New Britain’s Early Childhood Business Incubator, an innovative initiative that empowers Latina women to become childcare entrepreneurs while expanding access to quality infant and toddler care in underserved communities.
Tracey’s leadership has created transformative change in New Britain by pioneering an innovative solution that simultaneously addresses two critical community challenges: high unemployment among Latina women and inadequate access to quality infant and toddler care. Through her determined guidance, the Incubator has already:
- Trained 10 childcare entrepreneurs, primarily women from underserved communities
- Launched 4 operational businesses serving 36 families in childcare deserts
- Created a model now being replicated in 9 locations statewide
- Received national recognition through Harvard’s Zaentz ECE Innovation Pitch contest
- Inspired new legislation in Connecticut enabling incubator development statewide
What makes Tracey’s impact particularly significant is how her leadership has created generational change—empowering minority women as entrepreneurs while improving quality childcare access for working families.
Tracey’s ability to articulate a compelling vision has catalyzed remarkable community engagement. By connecting the dots between women’s economic empowerment and childcare accessibility, she has mobilized support from diverse stakeholders.
She has inspired community members and government officials to embrace this integrated solution, rallied support from the YWCA to leverage its expertise, and motivated the New Britain Housing Authority to provide critical facility space. Most impressively, Tracey’s success has inspired policymakers to create legislative pathways for replicating this model statewide, demonstrating how her leadership extends far beyond New Britain.
What truly distinguishes Tracey is her exceptional ability to collaborate across traditional boundaries. She has demonstrated remarkable insight and courage in bringing together:
- Public and private sectors, connecting government agencies with institutions like Neighborhood Housing Services and the Hartford Community Loan Fund
- Service providers and recipients, by hosting focus groups with existing family childcare providers to inform program development
- Policymakers and community members, ensuring legislative support aligns with ground-level community needs
- Economic development and social service advocates, uniting these often-separate domains around a common cause
This hybrid model between daycare centers and home-based family childcare businesses represents an unprecedented collaborative approach nationally, breaking down traditional barriers in the childcare industry.
In Tracey Madden-Hennessey, we see the very definition of transformative civic leadership—someone who identifies community challenges, builds inclusive coalitions, develops innovative solutions, and creates lasting change that improves people’s lives.
Congratulations, Tracey!
Tracey is the fifth recipient of the All-America Leader Award. Launched in 2022, the All-America Leader Award was created to celebrate the work of civically engaged community members. The award recognizes individuals who have successfully spearheaded civic engagement efforts in their community. The award supports the idea that anyone can be a difference maker in their community, whether it be an engaged resident, a business, a non-profit or faith leader, or a city official.
Last year, we were honored—and deeply saddened—to present the award posthumously to Teree Caldwell-Johnson, a League board member and remarkable leader who embodied the values at the heart of this recognition. In tribute to her extraordinary legacy, we proudly renamed the award in her honor.
Submissions are evaluated based on the National Civic League’s civic infrastructure measurement tool, the Civic Index. Nominees must exhibit the criteria of Civic Engagement, Inclusiveness and Equity, Collaboration, Innovation, and Impact. Reviewers also evaluate nominations based on the individual’s impact on the wider community, the inspiration they provide to others to lead, and their ability to collaborate with diverse individuals and a broad range of community entities.
For more information about the award and past winners, visit: https://www.nationalcivicleague.org/america-city-award/leader-award/
