Lace Lofranco

These days, you’ll find Lace Lofranco either slipping into her running shoes or zipping up her wetsuit as she trains for her first Iron Man Triathlon. Before that, it was training for marathons. And before that, she dedicated her free time to years of Muay Thai training. Lace has mental toughness, dedication, and commitment. It’s these three attributes that propel her life forward and give her confidence to climb any obstacle put in front of her.

Before she was training in a ring or working in tech, Lace remembers being drawn to math. In high school, a teacher held a class competition to solve an algorithm. Everything clicked for her. From the rational thinking to the logic behind how to problem solve, she found the challenge thrilling.

Lace comes from a family of entrepreneurs. This led her to taking courses in business and information technology management. She used her skills from school to land roles as a web developer, consultant, times at startups in the financial sector, and eventually data and analytics at Microsoft.

In March 2020, as the world was scrambling to function during a pandemic, Lace was brought onto a project that is her most memorable to date. The New South Wales Health Department needed to scale up their COVID test results reporting system. As cases quickly rose, the health administration needed a way to reveal virus test results on a larger scale, so they could report accurate, expedited numbers to the government. Lace and the rest of the CSE team worked one of their fastest engagements to date. The pressure and rush to get to the project over the finish line pushed everyone involved, but they did it. This project stands out because Lace was able to see the real-world impact her work had as soon as it shipped, which was extra satisfying for Lace and her team to witness.

Data and Lace go great together. The challenge of building solutions to derive insights from the ever-expanding data footprint of large enterprises is what excites her most.