Meet Lara Altman: PhD
Part of an ongoing series featuring our newest PhDs
Lara Altman began pursuing her doctorate after working in education, public health, and social work for nearly 15 years, leading initiatives focused on helping children and families.
Drawing on her experience—including directing Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative, a statewide network working to expanding the understanding of adverse childhood experiences and their impact on the health and well-being—she began studying how people and organizations work together to create lasting systems change.
Her dissertation, The Making of a Trauma-Informed, Healing-Centered State: Cross-Sector Collaboration as Interstitial Issue Field Development, examined how government and nonprofit leaders worked together across fields to advance a statewide trauma-informed, healing-centered movement in Illinois. The collaboration was convened by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois.
“Lara brought her full self, her heart, her courage, her multiple roles and identities, her lineage, her family history, and moved through historical movements that I can only imagine what it must have felt like,” said her advisor, Jeannette Colyvas. “She showed us what it means to tap into these as assets without losing your human self in the process.”
- Program: Human Development and Social Policy
- Dissertation: “The Making of a Trauma-Informed, Healing-Centered State: Cross-Sector Collaboration as Interstitial Issue Field Development”
- Advised by Professors Jeannette Colyvas and Cynthia Coburn
- Committee: Colyvas (chair), Coburn, and Tabitha Bonilla
Through more than two years of field observations, interviews, and archival research, Altman explored how people and organizations collaborate across sectors to develop new approaches to addressing complex social challenges. Her findings contribute to a growing understanding of how ideas and practices move across institutional boundaries and become embedded in organizations, public systems, and communities.
“Her work is going to be even more relevant, and we'll be looking to her guidance for years to come,” Colyvas said. “Because when you need to fix what's been broken and build things that have been neglected, you need to understand how to get the best minds and the best resources in the room and get it to actually work."
Altman holds dual master's degrees in public health and social work from Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. At SESP, she served as a teaching assistant for the Senior Honors Thesis program. She also received an American Educational Research Association Student Travel Award and was selected as a Just Education Policy Fellow. City Bureau spoke with Altman in 2024 about how trauma-informed learning could benefit students and teachers.
Learn more about SESP's Human Development and Social Policy doctoral program.