Lara serves as President & CEO of NOW Corp, a company she co-founded to free small businesses from the burden of being a free bank to their customers. Lara co-founded Nourish Inc, and introduced its first patented products for children. Lara experienced the challenge of waiting to get paid. Not finding a solution that worked, she launched Now® Corp and created NowAccount®, the first payment system that enables B2B businesses to get paid immediately in a way that feels like taking a credit card for payment (not a loan or factoring)
Lara serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Harvard Business School. Lara co-authored “Level Up: Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding your Business Back,” an award-winning book written with Stacey Abrams and with Heather Cabot, and published by Portfolio Penguin.
Lara is an internationally recognized speaker on creativity, innovation and access to capital. Internationally, Lara has worked in Koriyama, Japan with the U.S. Defense Department’s EAGLE Japan Program and served as the Ambassador to Lebanon for the 1996 Olympic Games.
Lara received an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a BS in Aerospace Engineering with highest honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was featured in USA Today as one of the top 20 students in the US, was the ODK National Leader of the Year and was a scholarship member of Georgia Tech’s Track & Field team.
Lara currently serves as a Trustee of the Georgia Tech Foundation and as President of the Board of Atlanta Heights Charter School, which she co-founded.
Lara is a member of the Leadership Georgia Class of 2005 and the Leadership Atlanta Class of 2004. Lara was a 2018 Southeast US Finalist for E&Y’s Entrepreneur of the Year and was named one of twelve 2019 E&Y Entrepreneurial Winning Women.
