2025 Public Service Awards

Darci Vetter is a food systems policy expert working at the intersection of agriculture, the environment, and international trade. Informed by her upbringing on an organic farm in Nebraska, Darci used her Truman Scholarship application to propose a U.S. Farm Bill that would support farmers based on how they grew their crops, not just their yield. Thirty years later, Darci remains focused on building more resilient food systems, creating incentives up and down the value chain to make agriculture more sustainable. 

During the Obama Administration, Darci served as Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, a Senate-confirmed role with the rank of Ambassador, and as Deputy Under Secretary for International Programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In these roles, Darci led the negotiation of the agricultural package of the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement, as well as significant agreements on subsidies and market access with China and Brazil. At USDA, Darci also oversaw the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service, including its international food assistance and trade capacity-building programs. 

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Darci served as a member of the Senate Finance Committee staff, helping to secure passage of trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea, and advising Committee members on trade elements of the 2008 Farm Bill. She spent seven years as a civil servant at USTR, focusing on both agriculture and environmental issues, including NAFTA implementation, and negotiating the environmental provisions of the US-Chile Free Trade Agreement and the trade provisions of several multilateral environmental agreements. 

After leaving federal service, Darci served as Head of Global Public Policy and Government Relations for the Nature Conservancy, building its capacity for policy influence and attracting public funding. Most recently, Darci served as SVP and Head of Global Public Policy at PepsiCo, where she focused on international regenerative agriculture and sustainability programs.

Darci received her BA degree from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and her MPA at Princeton.  Darci has been involved with the Truman community since her selection as a Truman Scholar in 1995. She has served as a Senior Scholar, spoken at Summer Institute, read applications to select scholar finalists, and served on the District of Columbia interview panel for several years.

For three decades, Wayne Williams has worked to ensure fair elections and protect Coloradans’ right to vote. Under his leadership as Secretary of State, Colorado was named the “safest state to cast a vote” by The Washington Post, while President Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary touted his work on election security as a model to the nation.

Wayne grew up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley where he first became active in public policy, organizing 70 of his fellow high school students to work the polls on election day and serving as student body president. After high school, he served a mission in Alaska for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and attended Brigham Young University. In the summer of 1986, Wayne dated and got engaged to his wife, Holly, while both were working on Capitol Hill as part of the Reagan Revolution. Wayne received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1989 and served as an employment and elections attorney since that time.

Wayne moved to Colorado in 1992 and two years later was appointed to the Colorado Springs Housing Authority. Over the next 33 years, Wayne was appointed to various public boards by four mayors and three governors from both parties.

Wayne also served for 20 years in elected office – a County Commissioner, Clerk & Recorder, City Council, and Secretary of State – where he helped create the Pikes Peak RTA, which has provided more than $2 billion in transportation funding to his community. As Colorado’s 38th Secretary of State, Wayne switched Colorado to paper ballots and established the nation’s first full risk-limiting forensic audit of election results. He also cut business fees and made nonprofit filing easier.  Wayne successfully passed 25 of 29 department bills through a divided legislature.

On the legal side, Wayne is most proud of his successful work to defeat the illegal conspiracy to defraud Colorado voters – and the American people – of their choice for President in 2016.  His actions were later vindicated by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Colorado Department of State v Baca, 591 U.S. __ (2020).

With the Truman Foundation, Wayne has served as a speaker and the longtime chair of the Denver regional review panel. He and Holly have four children and a daughter-in-law; together the seven of them have earned 16 degrees.

Hetal J. Doshi served at the U.S. Department of Justice for more than a decade, the last three of which she was a senior appointee in the role of Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division and oversaw national civil and criminal antitrust litigation. As the Department of Justice’s top antitrust prosecutor, Hetal managed hundreds of lawyers, economists, and professional staff in the litigation of historic, landmark cases spanning issues and industries that are consequential to millions of Americans, including, for example, internet search engines (U.S. v. Google), book publishing (U.S. v. Penguin Random House et al.), airlines (U.S. v. American Airlines et al.; U.S. v. JetBlue et al.), smartphones (U.S. v. Apple), live music events/ticketing (U.S. v. Live Nation and Ticketmaster), agriculture (U.S. v. Agri Stats), and digital advertising technology (U.S. v. Google).  As a representative of the Antitrust Division, she also led Department-wide efforts related to artificial intelligence and digital assets.

Prior to her appointment as Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Hetal served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado. In that office, she started as a member of DOJ’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, leading the investigation of global investment banks in connection with the 2008 global financial crisis - work that resulted in historic penalties and resolutions. She later prosecuted white-collar crimes, with a focus on complex frauds, especially involving exotic financial instruments in addition to public corruption offenses and civil rights matters. 

Hetal also spent a year in Nairobi, Kenya, where she worked as a volunteer on human rights and constitutional law issues, including supporting efforts to implement Kenya’s then-new constitution. Prior to her time at DOJ, Hetal worked as a litigator at three international law firms in Denver, New York, and Atlanta.

Hetal is a 2000 Truman Scholar from Alabama, a Truman Governance Fellow, and has proudly served the Truman community by speaking at various Truman events and serving on the Denver selection panel. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and Emory University.

Walt Cooper has devoted his career to building purpose-driven teams in the military, healthcare, and nonprofit sectors. Alongside his continued service in the U.S. Army Reserve, Walt is co-founder & CEO of Defiant Health, an early-stage company partnered with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute that is reimagining cancer diagnosis and treatment planning.

A former Army Special Forces officer, Walt spent 14 years on active duty, leading troops in combat deployments in Iraq and Africa, teaching at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and working as a speechwriter to General David Petraeus. He was awarded two Bronze Star Medals. Following his transition from active duty, Walt entered healthcare as part of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald’s MyVA transformation task force. Subsequently, he co-founded Cortica Healthcare – now a nationwide provider of multi-specialty autism care – and led Innovation at Walmart Health. 

In the nonprofit space, Walt was the founding board chair at the International Refugee Assistance Project and currently serves on the boards of the Green Beret Foundation and the Goldie Hawn Foundation. 

During his teaching tenure at West Point, Walt served as a mentor and advisor for aspiring Truman Scholars. A Governance Fellows speaker,  Walt currently serves on the Truman Council, the leadership advisory group for Friends of the Truman Foundation. 

Walt graduated as valedictorian from West Point in 1999, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and earned his PhD in Political Science from Harvard. Walt lives in Bentonville, Arkansas, with his wife Joy, also a healthcare entrepreneur, and their two daughters.