In addition to being CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), Lucy Sanders serves as Executive-in-Residence for the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has an extensive industry background, having worked in R&D and executive positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs for over 20 years, where she specialized in systems-level software and solutions (multi-media communication and customer relationship management). In 1996, Lucy was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow Award, the highest technical accomplishment bestowed at the company, and she has six patents in the communications technology area.

Lucy serves on several boards, including the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) Board of Trustees at the University of California at Berkeley; the Engineering Advisory Council at the University of Colorado at Boulder; the National Girls Collaborative Project Advisory Board; the Advisory Board for the Women's College Applied Computing Program at the University of Denver; the ATLAS Advisory Board; and several corporate boards. She is a member of the ACM nominating committee and the ACM-W Advisory Board.

Lucy received her B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively.