Lorena Mesa is a well-known data engineer, data scientist, Python educator, and conference speaker. She attended Northwestern University, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science & International Studies, followed by a Master of Arts degree in Latin American and Latino Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Lorena is passionate about democratizing open source and helping the public discover and use open-source projects. She advocates for ethical technology and is an open-source advocate.

Lorena started her career as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Illinois, followed by an internship at Obama for America as Latinos for Obama Intern. Afterwards, she worked as a Data Analyst at KENTECH Consulting Inc. and an Account Manager at Grainger Terry Inc. She then decided to switch to the tech industry and become a web developer student at Dev Bootcamp.

After that, Lorena has held several roles in the tech industry, including Data Engineer, Data Science at Sprout Social, Inc., Platform Engineer at Sprout Social, Inc, as well as Data Engineer, Software Intelligence Systems at GitHub.

Currently, Lorena is the Director and chair of the board of directors at Python Software Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes, protects, and advances the Python programming language. She is also a former founder and organizer of PyLadies Chicago, and programs co-chair 2019 and 2020 at PyCon US.