Tracy LaQuey Parker
Tracy LaQuey Parker is a Canadian-American businesswoman and the senior vice president at Parker Solutions Group. Earlier in her career, she served as Cisco’s chief technology officer and started The UTeach Institute. She is also known for winning the first-ever lawsuit against a spammer and for being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2017.
She was born on a United States Air Force base in Newfoundland and moved to Texas as a child. She studied at the University of Texas at Austin, earning a Bachelor of Arts with a focus on computer science.
In 1988 she began working for the University of Texas with the Texas Higher Education Network. In 1991 she helped create the Texas Education Network, which connected teachers in Texas to the Internet. She later left the university to join Cisco Systems as chief technology officer, leading projects that brought the Internet to schools around the world.
In 2006 she founded The UTeach Institute and then joined Parker Solutions Group as Senior Vice President of Business Development. She is the author of The User’s Directory of Computer Networks (1988) and The Internet Companion (1992).
In May 1997 she became the lead plaintiff in a spam lawsuit against Craig Nowak after he spoofed emails from her company’s website. She received more than 5,000 emails over two days, and a Texas court ruled in her favor in November 1997, making her the first person to win a case against a spammer.
In 2017 she was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:04 (CET).