As Chief Operating Officer, Lauren (she/her) oversees essential administrative functions of the organization, including Finance, Strategic Operations, Human Resources, Facilities, and Information Technology.

Lauren has dedicated her career to developing and implementing programs that serve and support New Yorkers. She joins the Legal Aid Society with extensive experience in operations, strategic planning, and implementation in the public and non-profit sectors. She spent the last eight years in a variety of roles at the NYC Department of Education, most recently as their Chief Administrative Officer where she oversaw the Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Labor, and Legal teams. A member of the Chancellor’s senior leadership team, Lauren supervised prioritization and planning for the Department’s more than $30 billion budget and helped to manage the Department’s responses to critical emergencies.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lauren led the strategy and implementation of a project that brought 500,000 LTE-enabled devices to students so they could access remote learning. She also oversaw a doubling of the size of the Department’s pool of substitutes and expanded teacher pipeline programs.

Lauren served as the Department of Education’s lead on the construction of the Brooklyn STEAM Center in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a career and technical training hub that offers high school students a range of career pathways, including design and engineering, computer science and IT, and film and media. As part of this effort, Lauren coordinated across legal, facilities, safety, and information technology teams to ensure the successful build-out of this innovative learning center.