Lauren Iaconis Ditmar is the Rotary Club of Cleveland's Excellence honoree in Marketing for 2024. Lauren was born in Cleveland's Clark-Fulton neighborhood and raised in Medina. After graduating from Medina Christian Academy in 2000, she studied Choral Music at Liberty University for four years, although health issues interfered with her graduation plans. Lauren later returned to school at Cuyahoga Community College, earning an Associate of Arts degree in 2012.

Professionally, Lauren has held a number of roles, including positions as a loan officer for a local mortgage broker, an office administrator at American Portfolios and a teacher of ESL for Berlitz International. She also served as the Limited English Proficiency Director for the Olmsted Falls City School District and for several years, spent her summers singing with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.

Lauren joined Cleveland State University in the fall of 2021 to pursue a degree in marketing, where she has compiled a 3.93 GPA. In the fall of 2023, Lauren completed a Data Activation Internship with the Performance Marketing Division of VML, a large creative agency. Post-graduation, she intends to enhance her technical skills through various certifications, including the HarvardX Data Science Professional Certificate. She plans to enter the field of data science within advertising in the fall, with a long-term goal of pursuing a graduate degree in statistics.

An interesting fact about Lauren—recently she became a new mother to a 2-year-old Korean adoptee, Jojo, an experience which gave her the opportunity to visit Seoul, South Korea on two separate occasions. She loves exploring her daughter’s ancestral culture with her.