Motivated by the desire to transcend political aporia – in which communities feel they must choose between two bad choices – with creative solutions the biggest driving force in her work and life. At ASU Lauren seeks to design research at the intersection of environmental policy and nature/society studies, to investigate how political decision-making takes place across different scales within complex global systems in support of social-ecological thriving in urban environments. To better understand the socio-economic factors underlying resilience, she investigates how people’s capacity to envision their available responses to climate change affects institutional decision-making in urban policy and planning. Current focus includes game theory, decision making, natural resource economics and complex adaptive system science. Lauren is an avid yogi and hiker with a love for travel and dark roast coffee.