Lauren Lafferty graduated with a BS in HDFS in 2005. During her time at UConn she led the HDFS student government, was named a New England Scholar, presented a thesis as an undergraduate and was later awarded an outstanding women’s award from the UConn Alumni Foundation. Lauren credits her HDFS degree as the bedrock for a nearly 20-year career focused on keeping families and children at the center of her equity focused work.
After graduating from UConn, Lauren worked for the Village for Families and Children in Hartford in out-of-school-time programming. Her work at the Village, combined with her HDFS background, fueled a desire to pursue her master’s degree. She moved to Boston and completed a master’s in education with a concentration in Risk and Prevention at Harvard University’s School of Education in 2008. At Harvard, Lauren was energized by her work as a Prevention Intern at the Gardner Pilot Academy (GPA), a community school in Boston. At this school she developed an ambition for high quality urban public education, led by a principal who excelled in this incredible work, allowing her to see the best practices in the field come to life.
In 2008 Lauren began her 16-year tenure at GPA. During this time, she designed, led and fundraised successfully for interventions, programs and partnerships that met the highest quality standards and supported families to thrive. She was tasked with funding the gap to ensure access to opportunity and quality learning for students beyond the public-school budget allocation. As a result of this work, Lauren raised and managed an average of $700,000 per year through grant writing and fundraising initiatives. Her work also required partnering with over 15 funders and 30 partners annually. Due to these efforts, GPA’s chronic absenteeism rate was lower than both the state and district averages, the family teacher conference rate of 100% was met annually and over 300 students and family members received basic needs in the form of clothing and food annually. As Senior Director of Extended Services, Lauren consulted, mentored and presented to many individuals from the field of community schools, early education, and prevention, all built off the foundation of HDFS.
Lauren is currently the Chief Program Officer at YWCA New Britain. In this role, she uses her collective experiences working in diverse urban communities for the past 20 years to support innovative programs and partnerships at the YWCA. She continues to work with an empowerment-focused and anti-racist lens, central to the YWCA mission, closing opportunity gaps through financial development.
Lauren currently resides in West Hartford, CT with her husband Gary and is the proud mom to Julia (4th grade) and Ava (1st grade). As someone raised in a large, loud and loving extended family, Lauren enjoys spending time with her many family members, friends and neighbors.