ONYX Profile – Lyra Logan

LYRA BLIZZARD LOGAN, ESQ

THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL OF THE FLORIDA EDUCATION FUND (FEF).

Lyra Blizzard Logan, J.D., is the executive vice president and general counsel of the Florida Education Fund (FEF), which has administered Florida’s McKnight Doctoral Fellowship and related programs since 1984. In addition to handling FEF’s in-house legal matters, Logan develops, directs, raises funds, and trains instructors for the organization’s pre-college programs, which include Centers of Excellence in 10 Florida cities from Tallahassee to Miami; the Florida National Achievers Society; an annual statewide pre-college summit; yearly state academic scholarship competitions; and year-round STEM/computer programming/coding camps for underserved youth, FEF CodeMasters, and young adults, FEF Upskill.

Logan earned her bachelor’s degree from Fisk University and her juris doctorate from Harvard Law School. She also holds graduate certificates in Instructional Technology: Web Design from the University of South Florida; in Education Technology: Online Teaching and Learning from the University of Florida; and in Educational Mobile Computing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is an industry-certified web software developer.

She has presented at national and international conferences and published articles on copyright, supplemental educational services, online learning, and mobile app development, and recently authored the book “Learn to Program with App Inventor,” a computer programming text published by No Starch Press and distributed by Penguin Random House.

In “Learn to Program with App Inventor,” Logan aims to help bridge the computer science education gap because, in a world where computer science permeates nearly all aspects of life and supports progress in most fields, she believes everyone should understand the power and impact of computing. In the book, she guides readers through quickly creating fully functional, useful, and fun phone apps that incorporate exciting mobile technology features—like location sensors, cameras, and speech recognition—while also teaching the fundamental computer programing concepts that make them work. As readers build apps and learn computing concepts, Logan intends for them to begin to understand how software directs the actions and behaviors of our phones, robots, cars and other gadgets and also feel confident that they have the ability—the power—to write that software themselves.

A licensed attorney for more than 30 years, Logan has practiced with Florida law firms and worked as in-house counsel to a Fortune 500 company. She also has served as an appointee to the Florida Constitution Revision and Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commissions, Florida Small & Minority Business Advisory Council, and several municipal boards, and has volunteered on the boards of directors of multiple leadership, community-based, charter school and cultural arts nonprofits. In 2018, Logan received a “Tampa Bay Business Journal” Business Woman of the Year Award. Since 2019, she has served on the Board of Trustees and Governance Committee of the Tampa Museum of Art.