Sandy K. Lacey

Sandy K. Lacey is an executive leader who’s all about building things that matter.

As the founding Executive Director of the Howe Innovation Center at the Perkins School for the Blind, Sandy is catalyzing and convening key players from startups, academia, corporates, and government to drive innovation in accessible products and services for the disability community.

Beyond accelerating the DisabilityTech community at the Howe Innovation Center, she also leads 3 innovation business lines that are  products and services accelerating accessibility for children and adults, including the:

• Assistive Device Center, which builds over 2,000 pieces of adaptive furniture for children with disabilities
• Perkins Access, a global leader in full-brand accessibility consulting and human centered design research for Fortune 100 companies, universities, and government clients.
• Perkins Brailler, invented in 1951, is globally the most trusted and widely used mechanical braille writer by people who are blind. The product is durable and has a range of uses that enable literacy and mathematics from early learning through adulthood. We manufacture and distribute the brailler to more than 130 countries.

Sandy has extensive innovation experience in corporate, government, and academic settings, and excels in startup environments. Sandy is a 3x early startup employee, working at Emerging Energy Research (acquired: IHS), CB Insights, and Drafted (acquired: Instawork).

Serving the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under Governor Deval Patrick, she wrote state policies, programs, and drove infrastructure investments to grow the state’s emerging climatetech innovation cluster. As a corporate executive, Sandy built and led the engineering, design, and product management teams at the Innovation Lab for a Global 500 financial services company. In this role, she also spearheaded the company’s advanced technology practice including blockchain and voice-activated devices. She loves studying how technology and design can be leveraged to improve the human experience. She was a visiting lecturer on Entrepreneurship at Tufts University for 6 years and at MIT Sloan’s School of Management from 2021 – 2023, where she taught Building an Entrepreneurial Venture at the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship.

Sandy has a Master’s from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a B.A. cum laude from Georgetown University.