Lara Connaughton

Sustainability Lead, Comreg

Lara leads the sustainability work at ComReg, the Irish Commission for Communications Regulation, as part of the International Unit. Her work focuses on the ‘Twin Transition’ in Europe, where green objectives are upheld in parallel to our increasingly digitalized society. 
Lara is a member of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) working group for environmental sustainability - defining the digital sector’s impact on the environment. She is also the Irish delegate for the OECD Working Party on Communication Infrastructure and Services Policy (WPCISP) and a member of the OECD Bridge Initiative for Better Regulation in the Digital Age. 
Lara’s writing has been twice shortlisted by International Institute of Communications (IIC) for the for the global Future Leaders competition, for essays on ‘Policies for the evolving communications environment’ and ‘Cybersecurity on the Edge’.
Prior to joining ComReg, Lara worked at the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in Luxembourg, co-authoring a paper on the EU's response to China's investment strategy in Europe. Previously she worked in Investor Relations at Blackstone in London and as a management consultant at Accenture, after graduating with a first-class honours degree in Economics and Business from Trinity College, the University of Dublin. 
In 2016, Lara was the first Irish recipient of the Schwarzman scholarship for future global leaders, completing a Master's degree in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University, Beijing.