Lara A. Ballard serves as the special advisor for privacy and technology in the Office of Communications and Information Policy, Bureau of Economic, Energy and Business Affairs (EEB/CIP). She is on detail from the Office of the Legal Adviser, where she has worked as an attorney-adviser since 1999. She has litigated claims in the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, advised the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs on arms export control and various aspects of international criminal law, and defended the Department before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in federal court. Lara has most recently served as the Department’s primary source of legal advice on a wide variety of privacy and technology issues. She helped draft the Department’s guidance on use of social media and provided legal advice to the administrators and designers of the Sounding Board. She has also served as the Department’s primary representative to several interagency groups dealing with issues related to privacy, surveillance, and global Internet freedom.

Prior to her arrival at the State Department, she clerked for the late Hon. Fred I. Parker, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School (J.D. ’98) and the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (B.S.F.S. ’91). From 1991 to 1995, she served on active duty in the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery (PATRIOT) in Kaiserslautern, Germany and Kuwait City, Kuwait, leaving in 1995 with the rank of captain.