Lauren is deeply dedicated to living sustainably on Earth, our only home. She was born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest, and holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University, and The Chaplaincy Institute. After completing a B.F.A. in music theatre, Lauren pursued her childhood dream of living in New York City and worked off-Broadway. She moved to the Bay Area in 1998 for graduate studies in psychology, creation spirituality, and interfaith worldviews. Following her ordination in 1999, and until 2007, Lauren worked as an interfaith hospital chaplain, serving St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco, where she specialized in adolescent psychiatry, palliative care and bereavement support. Between 2005 and 2006, she was the Executive Director of Green Sangha, a nonprofit organization practicing spiritually-engaged environmental activism. She is featured in Renewal, an award-winning documentary, celebrating the efforts of religious environmental activists in Green Sangha and seven other groups from diverse faith traditions across America.

In 2007, recognizing that caring for the earth had become her deep love, Lauren, with necessary naiveté and determination, entered corporate America and went to work at Saatchi & Saatchi S, a sustainability consultancy in San Francisco. There she became the Director of Consulting Services. She was a member of the founding team that designed and facilitated over 200 day-long sustainability workshops for the 1.2 million associates of Walmart Stores, Inc. She has worked with a range of Fortune 1000 clients, combining her passion and skills to custom-design curriculum and facilitate trainings to increase awareness, encourage behavior change and build new bridges between the inner/outer ecology of individuals and organizations, one person at a time. Integrating her professional work with her commitment to interfaith spirituality and eco-justice, Lauren sought endorsement from her seminary, renewed her ordination vows and, in the summer of 2007, professed herself an Eco-Chaplain.  Currently, Lauren tends her private spiritual direction and consulting practice, and serves as Dean for her alma mater, The Chaplaincy Institute, in Berkeley, CA.

When she’s not working, Lauren enjoys bicycling, singing and dancing, and laughing with loved ones over delicious, locally-sourced, and unrushed dinners.