By Adrienne Sylver
Miami-Dade County is home to 309 parks — a sprawling portfolio that includes marinas, beaches, golf courses, pools and Zoo Miami. Behind the scenes, making sure technology keeps pace with the complexity of operations, is Laura Bombino Fernandez, a Florida International University graduate helping modernize the County’s digital systems and data platforms for parks and recreational services.
“You don’t manage a park the same way you manage a marina or a golf course or the zoo,” Bombino says. “You need to make sure the users have a great experience, whether they are reserving a tee time or signing their kids up for swimming lessons, and you want to be able to track and analyze data to improve efficiency and programs.”
Bombino joined Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces in May 2024, seeking a role where meaningful community impact felt built into the culture. By October 2025, she was promoted from analyst to strategic initiatives manager. She was soon assigned to a mayoral priority: the Zero Drownings Miami-Dade (ZDMD) initiative, designed to prevent the leading cause of accidental death for children between the ages of 1 and 14 in Miami-Dade County.
Since launching in 2024, the ZDMD initiative has provided free swim lessons to thousands of youngsters through a collaboration between The Children’s Trust, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the American Red Cross and several other partners. It received national recognition in 2025, being named the winner of the Best in Category: Children and Youth, by the National Association of Counties.
Bombino helped design and implement the technology infrastructure that powers the program, creating a centralized management system using Microsoft’s Power Platform. The platform supports online registration, class scheduling, attendance tracking, skills assessment and reporting across multiple partner organizations. Program administrators use the system to create and coordinate classes; assign pools, instructors and swim providers; manage student information and monitor participation.
Before her work, much of the program relied on paper forms and spreadsheets. Today, staff can manage the program through a centralized system and track results in real time.
“When you see the kids at the pool actually passing the skills, learning what will keep them safe around water, that’s meaningful,” she says. “And when you read the comments from parents in the end-of-program survey, it’s very touching.”
She’s also working to improve the county’s marina management system and the golf online reservation experience, as well as developing a Park Finder system to help residents explore local parks and amenities.
“We are really going through a digital transformation, using new technology to improve our operations,” she explains.Born and raised in Cuba, Bombino completed an associate’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering in Havana. When she arrived in South Florida in 2016, she spoke no English. Her first job was in the bakery at Publix, where she struggled to take phone orders. “I had no idea there were so many flavors and colors of cakes,” she said with a laugh.
Determined to pursue her interest in telecommunications and engineering, she took English as a Second Language courses at Miami Dade College while working full time. A friend connected her to an FIU advisor who evaluated her foreign transcripts; helping her enroll as a junior in the summer of 2018.
At FIU, Bombino was particularly drawn to cybersecurity and enjoyed the Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures course taught by Associate Professor Alexander Perez-Pons.
“I learned how to find important clues to detect an intruder or vulnerabilities in computer systems,” she explains. She also got involved with the FIU chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.
One of her most valuable experiences at FIU was her senior design project, where she was part of the team that competed in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar District Cup. The group developed innovative solar energy solutions for a university campus. Out of 61 participating universities, the FIU team placed first.
Much to Bombino’s surprise, the project drew the mentorship of Distinguished University Professor Arif Sarwat, director of the FPL-FIU Solar Facility.
“He is a prominent figure in sustainable energy research. A really big deal. So I was amazed that he agreed to be our mentor. His expertise and that of his doctoral students, pointed us in directions that we weren’t exploring initially,” she says.
Internships at GE Appliances and Collins Aerospace added hands-on experience in IT infrastructure, cybersecurity and analytics. After graduating in summer 2020, she joined Carrier Corporation’s digital technology leadership program, a rotational track for recent graduates, spending time in West Palm Beach and Atlanta. She became their Digital Project Lead, spearheading a $4 million initiative that resulted in a 20% increase in customer engagement and a 15% improvement in service efficiency.
“FIU definitely gave me the tools to adapt quicky,” she says. “Professors always challenge you to think outside the box. And the FIU culture is very welcoming. You meet and work with people from all over the world, which matters at a global company.”
Eventually, the pull of family and community brought Bombino back to Miami. She and her husband, Marcos, are on a quest to explore every Miami-Dade park while tackling home remodeling projects.
“I’m happy to be back, contributing to something that directly benefits the people here,” she says. “I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Laura graduated from FIU's College of Engineering & Computing in the summer of 2020 with a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering.