Lara is the Director and Founder of Wildfire Advisory, a consultancy providing strategic advice to community legal centres, advocacy groups and sector leaders across the justice, family violence and gender equality sectors. She is also a co-founder of Gender Justice Australia and currently serves on the board of Flat Out.
Lara was previously Executive Officer of Women's Legal Services Australia, the national peak body, where she led federal advocacy that secured an additional $50 million for legal assistance services and engaged with more than 50 parliamentary inquiries and reviews. She has held senior policy and government relations roles at Victoria Legal Aid, Women's Legal Service Queensland, Women’s Legal Service Victoria and the Federation of Community Legal Centres — where she co-chaired the Smart Justice for Women coalition of more than 60 organisations advocating to reduce the criminalisation of women. She has served as a Ministerial Adviser to senior federal and state politicians, including the Shadow Attorney-General and the Victorian Minister for Victim Support.
She is a qualified lawyer with a Juris Doctor from the University of Melbourne and a graduate of Leadership Victoria's Williamson Community Leadership Program and the Australian Institute of Company Directors' Governance Foundations for Directors program.
