Meet CeCe Lacey ’12, Birmingham-Southern’s new director of career services. Lacey brings a wide range of experience in nonprofit work, college career readiness, and education services that will all play an important role in her work to guide BSC students in their career search.

Lacey also brings a background that might be the most relatable to BSC students – her own experience 10 years ago deciding on her career path after the Hilltop. As a Spanish major and psychology minor who wound up jumping around several different industries, she has seen the importance of all kinds of professional experiences.

“With transitions in my career, I’ve had a ton of meaningful experiences because I was always able to see how one position fit into the next,” Lacey says. “That’s so much of what I want to be able to do: identify meaningful experiences, have the language to talk about them, and see how they are beneficial to the future.”

Since graduating from BSC, Lacey has held several service- and education-focused positions in Birmingham, including roles at Impact Alabama (now Impact America), Birmingham Education Foundation, and the Exceptional Foundation. She also coauthored the application to open the Magic City Acceptance Foundation and, in 2016, earned her master’s degree in education policy and management from Harvard University.

“I realized how much I loved the intersection of nonprofits and education, seeing how you can operate within a variety of schools with different opportunities,” she says.

In these roles, Lacey often worked directly with students in Birmingham City Schools, whether she was coaching middle school debate teams with Impact America’s SpeakFirst program or establishing college career readiness programs for high school students. Then, she grew her skillset by enrolling in the inaugural class of BSC’s Accelerated Data Science Program.

“I never went in wanting to be CeCe Lacey, data scientist,” she says. “I was always planning to make a career pivot where data science could be really useful. I was looking at workforce development and economic development, broadening my experience with community work and preparing people for the workforce.”

Completing the summer program a few months before beginning her role at the College in November 2021, Lacey used one of her data science projects – collaborating with Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Pete VanZandt and senior Dorothy Alexander – to analyze the contributing factors to student success and graduation rates at BSC.

This project and data science courses provided Lacey with new tools as she begins to revitalize BSC’s career services. In her first few months, she’s gone on a “listening tour,” connecting with students, faculty, and staff to explore how she can best support them on campus.

“I’m so excited to be in this position where I get to work with everyone,” she says. “To me, if I’m doing my job well, I will be integrated into every aspect of campus life.”

Lacey plans to offer a series of professional development workshops covering everything from resume writing to interview skills to reframing the idea of networking opportunities. The curriculum she is developing will be available for students at any point in their time at BSC.

She also hopes to reinvent the idea of career days through focused events with community partners. Networking events with nonprofits and women and minority-owned business are examples of what Lacey plans to host, adding to the ways other departments and offices are already preparing students.

“Birmingham knows that we’re here and have amazing talent to offer, and I have relationships with business, nonprofits, and other organizations around town,” Lacey says. “I’m encouraging students to dream big and find those opportunities that you never thought were possible and figure out how to get there.”