Lacy
Garrison
I'm a staff software engineer who builds tools people rely on when the stakes are high. At CNN, I build the producer tooling behind the Magic Wall — the interactive graphics system at the center of election night coverage. Whether it's a real-time data platform or your next website, I bring the same standard: fast, reliable, and built to perform under pressure. From real-time data platforms to freelance web projects, I build things that are fast, reliable, and ready for their moment.
CNN
Staff Software Engineer, WDB
I build the current generation of CNN's Magic Wall — the interactive, on-air graphics system at the center of CNN's election coverage. This version made its broadcast debut on March 13, 2018, for Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district special election.
Early work: Led front-end development and technical architecture for Code & Theory’s update the on-air application, including its sub-applications: National Map, House Battle for Control, Senate Battle for Control, Race to 270, and the Electoral College Delegate Tracker.
Current work: Today my work centers on helping our on-air talent explain the story of an election, from the primaries through election night, to our broadcast audience — developing new features that give them the tools to break the news down for viewers.
Supporting that is PTools2, a producer-facing Next.js content management platform and its GraphQL/Prisma backend that let producers shape coverage in real time. I lead development as one of two staff engineers on a cross-functional team of engineers and news producers.
I also help lead the design process, information architecture, and the platform's automated QA, with unit and integration testing in Vitest and end-to-end testing in Playwright.
The Magic Wall received a Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award for "On-air Touch Screen for Data Visualization."
Code & Theory Magic Wall Case Study
‘Magic Wall’ Technology Leads Election Night Coverage as Networks Jump on Trend
CNN’s John King and his ‘magic wall’ keep viewers entranced
Dublin’s graffiti artists also spent the week watching @JohnKingCNN
Selected Work
Broadcast · Editorial · Product
Deep Cuts
A longer client historyExperience
Staff Software Engineer
Designed, developed, and implemented features for the Magic Wall, an electron application used to display live election results, voting history, census data, and other data on CNN’s television broadcast.
Associate Director of Technology, Front-end Architecture
Developed and implemented technical solutions for multimillion dollar projects. Created user interfaces and data visualizations in front-end code; worked across interdisciplinary teams to ensure the fidelity of the graphic design and meet client goals. Served as associate technical architect on CNN’s Magic Wall. The Magic Wall application was central to CNN’s “Election Night in America” in 2020 which was watched by 9.1 million people. Led small engineering teams, including front-end, back-end, and quality assurance engineers. Chaired a monthly front-end team meeting to discuss developments in technology. Served as a member of technical leadership to guide business development and engineering solutions. Mentored multiple developers in professional growth, coding skills, and interpersonal communication. Organized a weekly company Dungeons and Dragon game, which contributed to company culture across disconnected departments.
Design Technologist
Worked as a member of the design team in the art department of the New York Times’ newsroom. Responsibilities included coding interactive article templates to highlight specific stories; developing a single-page application The Scoop, an insider’s guide to New York; designing site-wide features for the nytimes.com, such as video players and slideshows; and building prototypes that were used for user testing, such as the New York Times’ paywall. Won two company-wide tech challenges for creating an ADA-accessible prototype of nytimes.com and a user-generated trivia game.
Freelance Developer
Developed front-end code and lead interaction design on several websites. Drupal CMS projects include: Garden & Gun; Guideposts; and Columbia University: Mailman School of Public Health. Other clients include New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Web Developer
Developed sites for several clients including: National Geographic; Adecco; and HBO. Used a variety of content management systems including Microsoft SharePoint, WordPress, and Drupal.
Education
Columbia University
Concentration in Java Programming and E-Commerce Development
New York, NY
Hendrix College
Computer Science & Psychology
Conway, AR
Skills
- JavaScript
- CSS
- HTML
- GraphQL
- SQL
- PHP
- Python
- Java
- C++
- React
- d3
- Angular
- Gatsby
- NextJS
- Ember
- WordPress
- Drupal
- ExpressionEngine
- Contentful
- Adobe Experience Manager
- Node
- Webpack
- Storybook
- Jest
- NightwatchJS
- Figma
- Adobe Creative Suite
- LAMP