About
Biography
Lara Smith spent 11 years running two different arts organizations, Actor’s Express, and Dad’s Garage. While at Actor’s Express, she helped lead the organization through a financial crisis and ultimately retired 26% of its debt in two years. At Dad’s Garage, Lara led the organization through losing their home of 18 years, finding a permanent home, running a nontraditional capital campaign, overseeing renovations, and most recently, surviving a pandemic. Lara served on the mayor’s advisory council for reopening the city, helped organize Arts Vote ATL, and sat on the creative industries roundtable for the Metro Atlanta Chamber.
Lara received a scholarship from the Harvard Business School Club of Atlanta to attend a weeklong session called Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management in 2014. She was also a member of the LEAD Class of 2014, was named one of the 40 under 40 by Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2015, was a member of the RLI Class of 2017, and was named as Atlanta Magazine’s Most Power 500 leaders in 2020 and 2021.
While serving as Managing Director of Dad’s Garage, Lara also was the President of the Board of the Old Fourth Ward Business Association. She helped the organization explore the creation of a CID and created the company’s first strategic plan.
While at Purpose Possible, Lara worked with clients on their strategy. This included strategic planning, resiliency planning, recruitment, coaching, facilitated session, board engagement, and retreats. Clients included: Decatur Business Association; Hand, Heart, and Soul Project; Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia; ServeHAITI; Central OAC; Decatur Arts Alliance; Humorology Atlanta!; Root Local; and MODA. While with Tim’s Big Heart Foundation and the Harris Family Foundation, Lara created organizational strategic plans, built and stewarded relationships, and managed logistics of events and retreats. She also helped create and file founding documents and served as a thought partner for the founders.
Lara’s passion has always been in personal development, and she’s excited to find intersections between her professional work and personal passion. She volunteers her time with the Reynoldstown Rangers and lives in Atlanta, GA with her wonderful husband and incredible dog.
Skills
Thought Leadership
I can speak or write on a variety of topics including planning a retreat your team will love, the importance of getting out the vote, and the impact of arts.
Strategic Planning
I have led strategic planning processes for many nonprofits. These have included arts and cultural groups in addition to a business association, a service organization for farmers, and an organization focused on using dirt bike culture to end the cycle of poverty.
Consulting
I can lead board retreats, facilitate big picture conversations, coach executives, and make recommendations on business models.
Nonprofit Management
With twelve years of experience running nonprofits with budgets from $500k to $2M, I focus on the ‘why’ to unlock the potential of staff and volunteers.
Advocacy
I'm helped organize a series of events under the Arts Vote ATL banner. In addition to a Mayoral Forum, we facilitated conversations about the arts in each of the 12 city council districts.
Project Management
When Dad's Garage lost its home of 18 years, I oversaw the search for a temporary home, a new home, all fundraising, and renovations.
Hiring
Over my 12 years of leadership, I have hired more people than I can count. I have also been involved in numerous executive searches throughout my career. In that time, I have developed a multi-round process that identifies what is most needed for the organization and one that finds the best candidate. While working at Purpose Possible, I created and refined a hiring process used both internally and by clients.
Change Management
With growth comes change, and bringing people along for that change is often about communications. I have developed systems and tools to loop in folks at the right point and create buy-in.
Fiscal Oversight
You have to read financials to make business model changes and end 11 consecutive fiscal years in the black.
Cultural Transformation
Communicating expectations and holding people accountable is the key to any meaningful change. And for big cultural change to happen, people must be part of it. I have created processes to involve all and make this change.