Lauren enjoys working for mission-driven organizations and cultivating healthy, vibrant communities and has honed her program management skills over the past 30 years with a variety of nonprofit organizations. Her early career focused on education and outreach efforts for several environmental non-profit organizations in Massachusetts and Vermont. But she, most recently, comes to OLLI after working for UVM Extension for over 20 years where she focused on designing and delivering experiential learning opportunities for youth in the 4-H program. One of the programs she developed called Teens Reaching Youth (TRY) for the Environment received the Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence three times. This program trained over 600 teens teachers who, in turn, taught over 5000 K-4 youth. Lauren also connected youth to exciting research happening on campus through a variety of programs including Teen Science Cafes, Discover Engineering, Learn to Code, Natural Resources Management Academy, Youth Environmental Summit and others. She also regularly led professional development learning opportunities for adults seeking to gain new skills related to positive youth development, life skill development, youth engagement and youth leadership.
Lauren holds a B.A. in Political Science (with extensive coursework in Environmental Studies) from Brown University and a M.S. in Natural Resource Planning from the University of Vermont.
Originally from Maine, Lauren came to Vermont in 1995 for graduate school and never left. She enjoys skiing, standup paddleboarding, walking on trails with her dog Marshall and exploring new places with her husband and friends.