After graduating from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Darci moved to Washington, DC to participate in Truman Summer Institute and begin a one-year fellowship at the National Rural Development Partnership in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She then worked for a year as the assistant to the president of Children's Memorial Foundation, the fundraising arm of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. At Children's she learned the basics of fundraising and non-profit management, including writing grants and projecting funding needs for hospital programs. Darci concentrated in Field II at WWS and also received a STEP Certificate. She spent her summer internship at the Palestine Hydrology Group in Ramallah, Palestine, where she worked on water pricing policy and drafted educational materials to promote water saving technologies among Bethlehem hotel owners.

Upon graduation from WWS, Darci received a Presidential Management Fellowship and went to work as a Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Management. Her duties included acting as the liaison between the Under Secretary and State Department bureaus of consular affairs and administration, as well as drafting speeches and Congressional testimony. Darci used her first PMF rotation to spend four months in Hong Kong serving as the Environment, Science and Technology officer at the U.S. Consulate.

Darci's second PMF rotation took her to the environment section of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where a six-month assignment turned into a four-year job. Highlights included negotiating environment provisions of the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement, and negotiating the trade and environment section of the Declaration at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. Darci then spent two years in the agriculture office at USTR, where she worked on the WTO agriculture negotiations, NAFTA implementation and bilateral trade issues with North America and Europe, including negotiation of a wine labeling agreement with the EU (which included lots of tasting). She frequently uses the skills she gained in the STEP program, including environmental economics and the fundamental of risk assessment.

Darci served as an international trade advisor on the Senate Finance Committee, where she advises the Chairman and other Members of the Committee on trade issues related to agriculture, the environment and labor, including trade provisions of the 2008 Farm Bill, pending free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea, and trade aspects of climate change legislation.  She currently serves as the Deputy Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the USDA.