Financial Modeler Spotlight: Carolina Lago – Managing Director of Tactic Financial

Every spotlight we publish is a chance to celebrate another brilliant mind pushing the boundaries of financial modeling.

This time, we’re turning the focus on Carolina Lago, a Corporate Trainer and Financial Modeling Specialist, whose journey embodies resilience, expertise, and a passion for elevating the finance profession.

Financial Modeling as a Global Diplomatic Passport: The Carolina Lago Story

When Carolina Lago describes financial modeling, she does not begin with formulas or functions. Instead, she calls it her “global diplomatic passport”, a skillset that has carried her across continents, industries, and leadership roles.

Her journey from Brazil to the United States, and now as a finance educator in France and Switzerland, illustrates how technical mastery, curiosity, and strategic thinking can elevate finance from a back-office task to a front-line driver of decision-making.

Carolina’s entry into financial planning and analysis (FP&A) was fueled by a refusal to accept superficial answers. While implementing a planning tool early in her career, she encountered persistent errors in the balance sheet. An external consultant advised “plugging” the statements, a workaround that allowed the system to reconcile but violated her instincts. For Carolina, every debit needed its credit, and every connection had to make sense. Her decision to unravel the underlying mechanics became her first true lesson in financial modeling.

That commitment to clarity eventually produced the TACTIC Financial Modeling Framework™, a methodology that connects financial mechanics to strategic decision-making and real-world business outcomes. Rather than treating models as static spreadsheets, TACTIC emphasizes clarity of drivers, alignment with strategy, and flexibility under shifting assumptions helping to align forecasts, strategy, and daily operations so teams and business owners can think critically, build intelligently, and act strategically.

Her academic and professional credentials strengthen her authority: a Master’s in Accountancy with a specialization in Data Analytics, the Advanced Financial Modeler (AFM) designation from the Financial Modeling Institute, and her pursuit of the Certified Financial Modeler (CFM).  Through her firm, Tactic Financial, she trains professionals and organizations to elevate their financial modeling practice from technical proficiency to strategic acumen.

When building models, she insists on starting with fundamentals, clarifying business drivers and strategic context before opening Excel. Tools such as Power Query, Power BI, and SQL may enhance her work, but the true strength lies in ensuring that models remain actionable, decision-ready, and strategically aligned.

Her advice to aspiring financial modelers is simple but powerful: “don’t just focus on Excel tricks, focus on business understanding. The real power of a model is not in how sophisticated the formulas are, but in how clearly it reflects how the business works. Learn the industry, understand the drivers, and then use modeling as a tool to bring that knowledge to life”.

Carolina Lago’s story underscores a broader truth: financial modeling is no longer a technical niche. It is a strategic discipline, a global passport, and when done well, a pathway to clarity in business. It also reminds us that the best models do not just answer questions, they translate, connect, and create understanding.

To keep up with more of Carolina Lago’s work and insights, follow her on these platforms:

LinkedIn: Carolina Lago
Medium: Carolina Lago
X (formerly Twitter): @CarolinaLago