When Wayne Zahner, CFO of The Recording Academy, first met Lani Simmons, she was 55 years old and sitting across from him in an interview for a dream job she thought she had no chance of landing. After all, this was The GRAMMYs. She had recently left Mattel after a 27-year career and found herself, like so many women at midlife, questioning if the professional world still had room for her.
“I can’t believe you hired me, even though I was 55 and still used shorthand!” she told him later.
Wayne smiled and answered with quiet certainty.
“I hired you because you were 55 and knew shorthand, not in spite of those things.”
Wayne instantly saw someone with that kind of company tenure and experience as a rare and valuable asset. Her shorthand skills, in particular, brought an extra layer of confidentiality, an invaluable advantage for a CFO of a high-profile organization.
"Here's somebody that can help me do a better job as CFO. I thought she was the perfect person for me," Wayne said.
And so began a fifteen-year partnership inside one of the most high-profile organizations in music. But Lani Simmons wasn’t interested in titles or prestige. She wasn’t trying to prove anything. She simply showed up. Fully, consistently, and with a kind of grace that can’t be taught.
From her first day at The Recording Academy, Lani brought an energy that changed the rhythm of the room. She had this way of making people feel instantly at ease. The other Admins called her "the dean." When someone had a question about process, about politics, or how to deal with a tricky personality, they came to Lani. She became the one everyone turned to, not just for how-to’s or quick answers, but for how she made you feel when the work was hard and the pace relentless. She felt like home.
She was the kind of person who could make folding hundreds of 401k mailers feel like a party. She emailed funny jokes and comics, shared music, remembered your favorite dessert, and made everybody on the floor feel included. Her humor was dry and quick. Her spirit, electric. She had this way of both anchoring and elevating the people around her.
"She lived with joy. She didn't waste a second," her coworkers shared.
You could spot her desk by the jungle of greenery trailing over every surface. She was the plant whisperer, the person coworkers would bring their near lifeless plants to for resurrection. She was also a master knitter. Over lunches, she taught coworkers how to cast on and purl. She made hand-knit gifts for colleagues every year, scarves, slippers, baby owl beanies, even a knitted beard with loops to hook over glasses. One colleague said she had enough yarn creations tucked away in her hutch to clothe a small village.
Lani saw beauty in small things and believed in celebrating often. She organized department potlucks, holiday shirt-painting parties, and brought her legendary pineapple upside-down cake to celebrations. She didn’t just work at The Recording Academy. She wove herself into its fabric.
But Lani was not all softness. She had edge and humor and a razor-sharp ability to read people. She knew who you were before you did. Her sayings lived on long after she left, things like “Hold my ankles, I’m going in” when diving into her favorite foods, or “Back in my day, when Earth was still cooling,” making light of her age. She described Wayne's jam-packed calendar at times as looking like “the dog’s breakfast.” She could lift your spirits with a one-liner and then walk away before you could say thank you.
The story of her hiring has a perfect second chapter. On her first day at The Recording Academy, Lani showed up with a new nose ring. Wayne, ever the detail guy, did a double take.
“Did you have that piercing when I interviewed you?”
She looked mildly panicked. “No, I figured if I was going to work in rock and roll, I better look the part!”
They shared their first laugh. Wayne wasn't worried one bit about the nose ring, just wondering if he lost his eye for detail.
That was Lani. A little bit rebel. A whole lot heart.
Lani Simmons lived her life to a soundtrack that was as rich and varied as she was. A lifelong Beatles fan, she saw them live at the Hollywood Bowl at 14 and later tattooed the Yellow Submarine on her shoulder.
Her musical taste was expansive. She found joy in the haunting beauty of Bon Iver, the soul of Gregory Porter, the raw energy of Florence and the Machine, the poetic grit of Nathaniel Rateliff, and the sounds of Future Islands, The Lumineers, and The Mavericks. Music wasn’t background noise for Lani, it was part of how she experienced the world.
The same could be said of her passion for hockey. A die-hard LA Kings fan, with a tattoo to prove it, Lani attended games often with her best friend Leslie. With headphones on, Lani tuned in to her favorite radio broadcaster, listening intently to every play-by-play as the game unfolded in front of her. Lani also loved her cats.
In her final years, as she battled cancer, she never let her light dim. She remained involved, engaged, and deeply loved. She had a calendar on her wall to keep her days organized and track which colleagues were visiting when so they could enjoy undivided time together.
When she passed, colleagues wrote in from across the country, asking about her. At her memorial, every chair held something she had knitted. Each stitch a quiet testament to who she was. Generous, attentive, joyful in the everyday.
And in a rare, unanimous decision, The Recording Academy honored her in the GRAMMYs In Memoriam segment this past January. Not because she was famous, but because she was unforgettable.
On April 21, 2025, we honored Lani with the Jeanette Castellano Lifetime Achievement Award at the 10th Annual Admin Awards in San Francisco. It’s was the first time we’ve ever presented this award posthumously. It was presented to Wayne Zahner, who from the very beginning of Lani's tenure with The Academy saw not just her capabilities, but her worth.
Lani Simmons spent her life giving to others in ways that cannot be measured by job titles or captured in performance reviews. In hand-knit scarves and homemade cakes. In making the mundane a memory. In whispering life back into everything - and everyone she touched.