Dagnija Lācis was just a toddler when World War Two swept over the Baltic States. As the Russian Soviet army occupied Latvia and her family was slated to be deported to concentration camps in Siberia, a sure death, they escaped to Germany. There, Lācis lived with her family for five years in a Displaced Persons camp, until they were sponsored by a church in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1950. She was 7 years old at that time and entered public schools knowing just a few words in English.
In her memoir, The Wall Falls, A Woman Rises: How a U.S. Tech Entrepreneur Broke the Glass Ceiling and Helped Modernize Latvia (March 2025), Lācis recalls life as an immigrant who eventually broke into the tech field and brought her talents back to Latvia.
Lācis tells about her many trips back to Latvia, first in 1978, while the country was still under Soviet occupation, but then again in 1990, when Latvia had regained its freedom. Since then, she has taken countless trips back to establish her business, Baltic Technology Group (BTG), and modernize technology in the country.
“In 1978, I really didn’t want to go on that trip,” she says. “It wasn’t easy. You had to go in and out of Soviet Russia. What I saw of communism in Latvia, I didn’t like. I realized I never wanted to be part of a communist country. I was so glad my parents had fled.”
By that time, Lācis had earned her degree in the IT field from Butler University. She had become the first woman programmer at Burroughs Corporation, the second-largest IT company in the world at the time. By 1984, she was the first female line vice president at Burroughs Corporation. In 1990, she returned to her homeland at the request of the newly freed country's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, bringing technology experts, systems, and training that helped prepare Latvia for early acceptance into NATO and the EU following its independence.
Prior to 1990, Lācis says, all Latvia had was, to quote the Foreign Minister, “these big, old typewriters.” The next year, Lacis founded BTG and quickly brought the country up to date.
Lācis has faced bias most of her life as an immigrant and as a woman in the tech field, but she has always kept to her motto: “Stick to your goals. When confronted with obstacles, don't give up. Find another path forward!”
In this memoir, Lācis shares her view from the front lines of three major world events: the women's movement, women’s arrival in programming and IT management, and one country’s transition from communism to capitalism.
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