Meet LAra 

How do we become extraordinary leaders?

How do we fulfill our purpose?

How can we lead our most meaningful, impact-driven lives?

These questions have animated Lara’s 25 years in leadership development, organizational growth, and social change work. 

As the founder of The Genuine, Lara provides executive coaching, strategic planning, and advisory support to leaders seeking to elevate themselves, their teams, and their organizations for greater impact. She’s an expert on realizing purpose, having developed a science-backed methodology to support clients in understanding how to deeply integrate purpose into their work and workplaces. She works with leaders pioneering new initiatives, and with those looking to reimagine established practices.

For more than a decade, Lara served as the co-leader of Echoing Green, an angel investor in social change startups around the world. There she worked with extraordinary social entrepreneurs to support the launch and development of more than 250 groundbreaking organizations in more than 70 countries. While in her care, Echoing Green grew seven fold. 

Lara serves as board chair of the Initiative for Medicine Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), which works to ensure the affordability of life-saving drugs around the world. She’s a founding advisory board member for the Women’s Leadership Council (WLC), which supports New York-based women executive directors and senior leaders of social impact organizations; and she founded and tends We Are Coaches, a learning and support network for leadership and executive coaches.

As a speaker, facilitator and thought leader, she has worked with dozens of organizations including Stanford University, Overdeck Foundation, 92Y, Harvard iLab, NoVo Foundation, Leading Edge Harvard Business Review, New School, Be Social Change, The Philanthropy Workshop/Ford Foundation. 

Lara is a phi beta graduate of Wesleyan University and received her master’s with honors in strategic communications from Columbia University. Her coach training is from CTI and Coach Rising. She is the author of two books, Be Bold: Create a Career with Impact and Work on Purpose.