Lauren is from Yorba Linda, California. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California at Irvine in Sociology and her graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, earning a Master's in Public Policy in 2010. While at UCLA, Lauren worked at the UCLA Center for Health Policy analyzing the health status and health care utilization patterns of American Indian Elders in California and tobacco control policies for American Indian communities. She completed a thesis on the impact of several cost-controlling policy options for the California AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Following her work at UCLA, Lauren joined the Washington, D.C., office of Mathematica Policy Research where she worked for two years as a health policy analyst performing program evaluation of federal health care quality improvement and quality measurement initiatives. Lauren is interested in integrating human-centered design principles with program design and evaluation in the global health field and enjoys hiking, yoga, and performance storytelling.