Lara is currently serving as the Special Advisor for Privacy and Technology in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. She served as the head of the U.S. Delegation to the Working Party on Security and Privacy in the Digital Economy (SPDE) at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, during the OECD’s 2013 revisions to its 1980 Guidelines Governing the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Data. She also co-led the National Science and Technology Council’s Privacy Committee International Affairs Sub-Committee from 2011 to 2014, during the deliberations over the European Union’s proposed General Data Protection Regulation. Lara served as an Attorney-Adviser at the State Department from 1999 to 2012. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP), a certification issued by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). Lara has also served as the State Department lead attorney on privacy and technology law, including but not limited to the Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA), and the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). She has also defended the State Department in litigation, both domestically and in the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, and has advised on various aspects of international criminal law and arms export control. Lara clerked for the Hon. Fred I. Parker, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and was an Air Defense Artillery officer in the U.S. Army from 1991 to 1995, serving in Kaiserslautern, Germany and Kuwait City, Kuwait.