For two and a half decades, Laura has built and led a wide range of campaigns and coalitions. 

Laura served as ACT-LA’s Director for ten years, from 2015 to 2025. She worked with coalition leadership and staff to build ACT-LA into a coalition with 49 organizational members, eight staff and to increase the budget tenfold to $1.2 million.

During her time directing ACT-LA, Laura led the United to House LA coalition to win Measure ULA, the largest revenue source for housing in LA’s history. Laura served on the drafting committee for Measure ULA and in her role chairing the Yes on Measure ULA campaign, she directed all aspects of a campaign involving over 200 organizations, oversaw the ballot measure qualification effort and served as spokesperson for the ballot measure. She went on to be appointed by Mayor Bass to the ULA Citizens Oversight Committee where she played a key part in drafting ULA’s program guidelines. Laura also served on the steering committee of Our Future LA coalition which led the successful campaign to pass Measure A in LA County. Together with partners, she helped found and lead the Healthy LA coalition during the COVID-19 pandemic, which won some of the strongest eviction protections in the country for LA’s tenants. Laura directed ACT-LA’s Planning for Equity work, which trained and built the capacity of community leaders to get involved in community planning, leading to stronger affordability requirements and tenant protections in LA’s rezoning. She also worked with coalition leaders to establish a Transit Justice committee, which helped redefine safety at LA Metro, leading to the Transit Ambassador program. Laura also led ACT-LA in drafting and passing Measure JJJ in partnership with the LA County Federation of Labor, which established LA’s Transit Oriented Communities program. The TOC program has generated more affordable housing units than any other program in the state of California. 

Immediately prior to ACT-LA, she spent six years as Advocacy Programs Manager with the Center for Constitutional Rights. During her time at CCR, Laura worked closely with CCR’s partners in Iraq and the veteran community to launch the Right to Heal Initiative to advocate for healthcare access and toxic site clean-up post-Iraq War. Laura established close relationships for CCR in Honduras during the 2009 military coup and ensuing crisis; she led efforts in the US to cut funding to Honduras’ military and police. Laura also worked with CCR lawyers and other partners to end deportations to Haiti post-earthquake. Other work included supporting Palestine Legal with advocacy strategy, advocating for accountability for the role of private contractors that directed the torture program at Abu Ghraib, and supporting the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) as they fought for their rights in US and international courts.

Laura also worked as National Student Organizer for the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) from 2003-2006.  During her time at the NLG, she traveled nationwide helping students organize NLG chapters and speaking and training students on dozens of law school campuses.  She coordinated a national voting rights project during the 2004 presidential election where hundreds of Guild law students were mobilized as election observers in historically disenfranchised communities. She also recruited, trained, and organized hundreds of legal professionals to be "legal observers" in order to safeguard protesters' First Amendment rights. 

Laura holds an MA in Leadership and Management from the School for International Training. As part of her graduate education she did a deep dive into policy advocacy, training design and facilitation as well as organizational management theory and practice.

She also holds a BA in Community Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. While in college at UCSC, she was involved in the student movement and she co-edited the book Global Activists Manual: Local Ways to Change the World (Nation Books, 2002).