Meet Lara, one of our Partners.

Lara Jakubowski (she/her) has extensive experience in the social sector, particularly in nonprofit financial analysis, collaborations, mergers and strategic planning. Lara’s roots are in community development and her career has been inspired by organizations committed to addressing income inequality. She helps organizations collaborate effectively for greater impact, and leverages her experiences as a nonprofit Executive Director, lender to affordable housing developers, convener of nonprofits in shared spaces and shared services, Board Member and capacity builder to provide strategic solutions to clients’ challenges. She welcomes clients of all types and is especially interested in helping them overcome obstacles to make the most impact possible. Lara enjoys messy, complicated problems and seeing them through to completion.

Prior to joining La Piana in 2017, Lara served as executive director of the Nonprofit Centers Network, where she also held the position of national programs director. She has been the principal of her own nonprofit management consultancy and was executive director at Impact Development Fund.

Impact Approach

Lara loves the process of diagnosing what a client needs, even if it is different from what they think they need. She then draws on her extensive professional experiences to help her clients find the best solutions to the issues that challenge them.

Education

• University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business, MBA
• University of Pennsylvania, Bachelor of Arts: Economics

Outside of Work

Lara enjoys biking, travel (especially visiting local food markets like La Merced in Mexico City), hiking, skiing, cooking. She is also a lecturer in nonprofit financial management at the University of Colorado at Denver’s School of Public Affairs.