RAFA LOMBARDINO was born in Brazil in 1980. She graduated from Technical High School in 1997 with a Professional Degree in Data Processing and earned a Bachelor's Degree in Social Communications and Arts in 2002, majoring in Journalism. 

She is also certified by the American Translators Association (ATA, English to Portuguese and Portuguese to English) and by the University of California, San Diego Extension (Spanish into English), where she currently teaches classes about the role of technology in translation.

Rafa started working as a translator in 1997 and today owns Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators established in California in 2004.

In 2011 she started dedicating more time to book translations, which had got her interested in becoming a translator in the first place. She is the content curator of a blog called eWordNews, dedicated to the world of translated literature and self-publishing efforts.