She spent two decades advising leaders through complex challenges until she became a leader herself, as the head of the nation's largest fire department, the FDNY, as its 34th commissioner and first woman to lead the male-dominated institution. Her views on leadership are shaped by her unusual path to it, from a shy and reserved child growing up in a small rural town, to leading a public institution of 17,000 employees with a $2.3 billion budget through 24/7 crises, including line-of-duty deaths, terrorist attacks, and mass casualty events.

This job was the culmination of a career guiding leaders through their toughest problems.

Laura spent the first half of her career working on local, congressional, mayoral, and presidential campaigns and advising leaders at all levels of government, in particular, first-time candidates. Her desire to see deeper institutional change brought her to government.

As an executive at the FDNY for almost eight years before becoming Commissioner, she led through the city’s most challenging times: a worldwide pandemic, natural disasters, federal investigations and fiscal crises. She was at the forefront of modernizing the agency through technology innovation and transformation that made the agency more transparent, efficient, and effective. Her work and advocacy brought historic investments in the FDNY and the first responder workforce. Due to these years in the trenches, she would be appointed as the first civilian commissioner who had previously served in FDNY executive leadership, and the youngest in more than a century.

The trajectory has earned her a reputation as someone who is willing to take on the toughest and most intractable problems, and find new ways to succeed.

She has appeared on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, and the Drew Barrymore Show and been featured in Fortune, Crain’s New York Business, The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Daily Beast, and The New York Times. She has been cited as an expert in homelessness and mental health, public safety reform, transportation, housing, labor negotiations, workplace discrimination, counterterrorism, technology, disaster response, and public health.