Darlene Lanham brings over 15 years of expertise in CAFRs and campaigns to her role as founder and CEO of CAFRDATA. Darlene’s vision for CAFRDATA is to make finances of city, county, school district, and other taxing entities accessible and usable for all people.

Through her work on fair pay and other campaigns to benefit police officers, firefighters, and citizens, Darlene recognized the need for a centralized location to retrieve CAFR data. She effectively employed CAFR analyses to inform the financial messaging of various issue campaigns around pay, benefits, staffing levels, and equipment. Using CAFR analyses, Darlene successfully proved governments’ “ability to pay”; her opinions have been upheld in legal mediation.

Darlene also taught elected officials and staffers how to read CAFRs to understand what the data can and cannot do. She’s empowered people to understand public financial reports, and guided them on what follow up questions and information to ask as they make policy and budget decisions.

CAFRDATA brings speed, context, and comprehensive insights to these critical decisions. With the launch of the CAFRDATA prototype in 2018, Darlene is eager to make CAFRDATA available to all people in cities, counties, school districts, and states throughout the U.S.

When she’s not improving the product, she volunteers as Chair of the Audit Committee for University of the West and on the Capital Area Council of Governments Criminal Justice Advisory Committee.