Lavada is the Co-Head of Portfolios at Transcend, alongside Katie Bowen. She has dedicated the last decade of her career to deeply partnering with school communities and community organizations to design learning environments that support young people to thrive. In some of those most recent partnerships, she supported teams to lead a comprehensive community design process, design a new high school focused on environmental justice and immersive experiences for students, and to deepen an out-of-school approach to utilizing education to close the wealth gap.
Lavada's passion for new school models began during her time as a teacher with UnCommon Schools in Newark, New Jersey, and has only grown since then. Prior to joining Transcend, she was the Chief of Staff on the Org-Wide Strategy team at Teach For America and an Instructional Coach and Learning Facilitator with the Right Question Institute. She started her career in management consulting focused on organizational development and effectiveness.

Lavada brings a wealth of experience to her work, including experience as a school designer, facilitator, therapist, artist, and older sister. She is an attentive listener, skilled culture developer, and skillful facilitator with an unshakable belief that learning environments can be designed to support young people to achieve their biggest dreams. Lavada holds an AB in Sociology from Harvard University and a MA in Mental Health Counseling from UPENN. In her free time, when she's not traveling to work with partners, she enjoys spending time with her family in her home state of New Jersey.