brings over ten years of experience across international development and humanitarian response, with a focus on gender-transformative program design, monitoring and evaluation, organizational change, and women's economic security.

Her approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning is grounded in feminist values, meeting program staff where they are to build measurement systems that help organizations communicate the impact of their work without becoming extractive or burdensome. Through Emerson Impact Advisory, the independent practice she founded in 2026, she advises clients such as Peace Pays on organizational monitoring, evaluation, and learning and program design.

At the U.S. Department of State's Office of Global Women's Issues, where she was the subject matter expert on women's economic security and MEL lead, she led the measurement and reporting framework for the U.S. Strategy for Global Women's Economic Security across 10 federal agencies and advised a $50M+ portfolio of women's economic security programs, including oversight of a $20M centralized fund. At the International Rescue Committee, she designed gender-transformative program models and guidance for economic recovery and development programs and trained program staff across over 20 country programs, with particular focus on the Middle East and North Africa, and East and West Africa.

Lauren holds a Master's degree in Development Economics and Monitoring & Evaluation from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a B.A. in Anthropology from Bucknell University.

She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Hearts and Homes for Refugees and the Board of Directors of Columbia Land Conservancy.