Lara Fritts is a certified economic developer with over 25 years of experience in economic development, community development and leadership. Her experience spans city and regional levels in both public and private sectors assisting companies to execute their location strategies or development projects while helping communities achieve their goals. She has an expertise in building economic development organizations for elected officials having started six public-private partnerships/departments.Lara has an extensive career, having held positions in Wisconsin, Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia, and Utah. Currently, she serves as the Division Director of the Frederick County Maryland Division of Economic Opportunity which oversees economic development as well as workforce services. Prior to her role in Frederick County – Lara was the only woman leading a publicly traded micro-cap real estate company trading on the OTC Markets. There she stabilized the company by securing over $12M of affordable housing assets in DC. Her economic development experience is expansive, and a career highlight was serving as the Director of Salt Lake City’s Department of Economic Development (SLC DED) she was the architect of developing an economic development strategy. In three years, she worked to bring more than 30 new companies to Salt Lake City including UPS, Amazon, Stadler Rail, and others totaling over 9,000 jobs and nearly a billion dollars in capital investment. With her team she helped to deploy over $44 million into an affordable housing strategy creating over 3500 units throughout the city.Known as a community vitality champion she has strengths in economic recovery, affordable housing, strategic planning, tax credits and incentives, and organizational development. She is sought-after speaker and consultant on real estate, community revitalization, and economic development finance. Lara gives back to the economic development profession by serving on the Board of Maryland Economic Development Association, volunteering, mentoring, and advocating economic development topics.Lara holds a master’s degree in urban studies from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and a bachelor’s degree in regional analysis from the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. She is the recipient of Consultant Connect’s Top 50 Economic Developers in 2019 and was named a Fellow Member of the International Economic Development Council in 2020 which honors economic development professionals for attaining unusual stature in their field and closely related disciplines.