Karen Lash
Karen A. Lash's consulting practice helps organizations and foundations working to close the justice gap. She is a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Justice Lab and, after her second Fulbright visit to Canada was cancelled by the current administration in February, McGill Law named her a 2025-26 Visiting Scholar.
As a political appointee in the Obama Administration (2010–2017), Lash held leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Justice Office for Access to Justice, including Acting Director and founding Executive Director of the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR). She conceptualized and led LAIR, a first-of-its-kind executive branch policymaking model that brought together 22 federal agencies to incorporate legal aid into their programs and policies. Her work resulted in over half-a-billion dollars for legal aid, new research, and civil justice collaborations that facilitated civil rights enforcement. Lash joined the Biden Administration’s efforts in 2021, helping to implement President Biden’s May 2020 Memorandum regarding reinvigorating LAIR and relaunching DOJ ATJ which had been shuttered by the prior Administration.
