Abbey Lasater, Associate Vice President of Data Engineering at Sunwest Bank, shares her journey from uncertain student to confident tech leader, encouraging young women to embrace curiosity and persevere through challenges in STEM.
Sandy, Utah — May 8, 2026
"Just try it, and don't be intimidated if you don't know something," encourages Abbey Lasater, a rising leader in data engineering and mathematics.
Lasater is the Associate Vice President of Data Engineering at Sunwest Bank in Sandy, UT, a role she stepped into in October 2025. Sunwest is a bank that specializes in working with small-medium businesses, privately held corporations, family offices, and real estate developers and investors. Attracted to the community focus and the opportunity to explore data engineering, she is the first data engineer at the bank, with major projects already underway. Her current focus is unifying the bank's data onto a cloud platform, where she can continue to explore and understand data structure and usage in a banking context.
Lasater's initial exposure to data came during her first internship at Swire Coca-Cola, where she was new to analytics but enthusiastic to try something new. "Coming in, they didn't have an established data team. I'm the first data engineer, so the data wasn't what I was used to," she explains. "Nobody was there to just give me a knowledge transfer on what they had done in data engineering, it was my job to come in, explore the data, and understand what needs to be done." As an intern, she was tasked with building an AI chatbot, analyzing inventory, and working on supply chain and logistics projects.
After the internship, she was brought on full-time as a data scientist at Swire Coca-Cola, where she was soon given the opportunity to mentor the next intern to follow in her footsteps. "I hope that I passed on that it's okay to not know things," reflects Lasater. "Especially being in tech, things change so much, so quickly. There's so much innovation. You're never going to know everything."
She lives by that advice, too. Lasater's path through school wasn't always straightforward — she initially struggled with computer science and even considered dropping it entirely. She switched her major to mathematics, a subject she felt more comfortable with from high school, reasoning that computer science wasn't for her since she'd never taken programming classes before. But after settling into math, she decided to add a computer science minor. "It was kind of a full circle moment," she describes. "Like, 'I can do this'. This isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, and I ended up loving it." She is currently pursuing her master's degree in computer science from Utah Valley University, reflecting her commitment to growth within her career.
Lasater is passionate about inclusivity in tech, an interest that grew from the lack of diversity she observed in her own classes. "I had never seen a lot of women in the tech space, or a lot of my math classes were male dominant… I just hope that these young women who are growing up now can see that it's just as much for them as it is for anyone else." She also wants young women to know: "Just try it and don't be intimidated if you don't know something. The fun part about tech is the fact that you don't know everything."
Through the challenges of balancing her personal, professional, and academic life, Lasater has learned the importance of prioritization and having realistic expectations. She also wants young women to find their own approach to learning and to feel comfortable not having all the answers.
From a young woman drawn to math and technology to the first in her family to attend college and earn a bachelor's degree, Abbey Lasater's journey is one of perseverance and growth. Advancing from intern to employee to mentor, she has continued to develop her skills and leadership, now bringing that same energy to Sunwest Bank.
Her journey shows young innovators that success doesn't come from having all the answers, but from the willingness to adapt and learn. For anyone considering a future in data science, tech, or simply a new opportunity they're not sure about, her advice is simple but powerful: "Just try it, and don't be intimidated if you don't know something."
Siya Jain is a student at Cedar Valley High School in Eagle Mountain, Utah, and has been active in SheTech for over two years. Aspiring to become an entrepreneur, she develops her skills through coursework, leadership roles, and hands-on experiences, including networking with local founders and operators. Siya serves as SheTech president at her school and is a member of the program’s student board, helping to lead and represent her chapter.
Also from Cedar Valley High School, Izzie Larson is a senior pursuing an Associate’s Degree from UVU. She has a strong interest in linguistics, hydroponics management, and business communications, and is passionate about impromptu and public speaking.
Through the SheTech Media Internship with TechBuzz News, Siya and Izzie interview and write about Women Tech Awardees. Their reporting has been published on TechBuzz News, Silicon Slopes, and other media outlets.