Lauren Lafferty graduated with a B.S. in Human Development Family Studies (HDFS) in 2005 from the University of Connecticut. After graduating from UCONN, Lauren worked for the Village for Families and Children in Hartford, CT in out-of-school-time programming. Her work at the Village, combined with her HDFS background, fueled a desire to pursue her Master’s degree. She moved to Boston in 2007 and completed a Master’s in Education with a concentration in Risk and Prevention at Harvard University’s School of Education in 2008. In Fall of 2008 Lauren began her 16-year tenure as an administrator at a community hub school. During this time, she designed, led and fundraised successfully for interventions, programs and partnerships that met the highest quality standards and enabled families to thrive. She was tasked with the gap in funding to ensure access to opportunity and quality learning for students beyond the public-school budget allocation. As a result of this work, Lauren raised and managed an average of $700,000 per year through grant writing and fundraising initiatives. Her work also required partnering with over 15 funders and 30 partners annually. As a result of these efforts, the school's chronic absenteeism rate at GPA was lower than both the state and district averages, the family teacher conference rate of 100% was met annually and over 300 students and family members received basic needs in the form of clothing and food annually. 

Lauren is currently the Chief Program Officer at YWCA New Britain. In this role, she is using her collective experiences of working in diverse urban communities for the past 20 years to support the innovative programs and partnerships at the YWCA. She is continuing to work with an empowerment-focused and anti-racist lens, central to the YWCA mission, closing opportunity gaps through high quality programming support and financial development.