Lara Abrams Communications

Lara is the founder and principal of Lara Abrams Communications, LLC, a business development and strategy consultancy advising early stage and growth companies in pipeline development and lead generation strategies and tactics. Her firm’s services include representing clients into new business opportunities, providing competitive as well as market research, and consulting on growth positioning strategies.

More About Lara

Lara is what Malcolm Gladwell (Author of “The Tipping Point”) would call a ‘connector’ — her real strength being her enthusiasm for, and strategic ability to open doors for others, serving as a bridge to new opportunities and growth.

Lara Abrams Communications clients cross a wide range of industries – from clean tech to financial services, enterprise logistics software to consumer products, transportation parts management to market research, consulting services and retail.

Lara has served in both Director-level and VP-level roles for the companies she has worked for and she brings a highly sophisticated perspective and personalized approach to executive level business development. With Global Logistics Technologies, Lara held Director roles in Strategic Marketing, Business Development and Analyst Relations. As a member of the U.S. start team of one of the first ecommerce storefront technology providers, Intershop Communications, Lara executed a successful U.S. pr launch and communications strategy for the company prior to its IPO through two product launches. With CommerceNet, an organization that led business development and fund-raising efforts to seed e-commerce pilot project and test bed activities for early-stage technology companies working on e-commerce standards development and internet technologies in the ’90s, Lara was instrumental in driving business development efforts to build a membership base as well as coordinate pilot project and test bed activities with emerging ecommerce companies. After CommerceNet, Lara went on to become one of the first eCommerce industry analysts to cover online marketplaces and e-procurement technologies and vendors. Her practice focused mainly on coverage of private companies. Her clients while a Senior Analyst for Aberdeen Group included companies such as Perfect and Commerce One (now Perfect.com), Ariba, Rightworks (now i2) and Calico Commerce (acquired later by PeopleSoft). At Aberdeen, she advised technology vendors and executives building Internet-driven business models and also provided due diligence for top tier Silicon Valley vc’s. She is the co-author of an Aberdeen Group report “Internet Incubators: A New Value Proposition for Entrepreneurs and Investors (April, 2002, Aberdeen Group).

She has a Master’s Degree in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies, German Studies and Political Science from Northwestern University. A DAAD-scholarship recipient, Lara began her professional career in Germany interning with Deutsche Bank in Freiburg, while at the same time studying business management (Betriebswirtschaftslehre) in German for a year at the university in Freiburg as the first American recipient of the Madison-Freiburg Sister City Partnership Post Graduate Fellowship program. She was later hired by the Managing Director of the Frankfurt, Germany offices of Leo Burnett as a key bi-lingual American hire on Leo Burnett’s team of client services advisors to client Philip Morris International, for whom she managed a range of advertising activities. She was instrumental in the launch of a Philip Morris clothing line in Austria and France, coordinated agency activities with Leo Burnett Israel, Moscow, Turkey, Dubai, and Poland, and handled execution of advertising activities across a portfolio of Philip Morris brands, spending a large part of her time on Philip Morris EEC, Formula 1, and pan-EEMA advertising promotional activities.

Lara is also the Founding Editor of the blog The Abrams Clean Tech Report. She has written for Sustainable Life Media as well as GreenBiz.com publications, and has been quoted in publications such as Popular Mechanics, InfoWorld, Information Week, Red Herring, Construction.com, Internetnews.com, Darwin Magazine, and Line56, appeared on PBS’ CEOWatch and recently participated as one of 60 invited thought-leaders in a Dow Chemical-hosted virtual conference called The Future of Water.

A Central Oregonian at heart, Lara remains true to her roots by playing an active role in clean tech, advising clean tech client companies, promoting and reviewing clean tech market-transforming technologies and companies via The Abrams Clean Tech Report. Today Lara volunteers with the Clean Tech Open and Astia. Lara can be found spending as much as her ‘off time’ as possible outdoors and in Oregon with her family. An avid skier, she also paints in her spare time. She and her family reside in the San Francisco Bay Area. The picture on this page was taken by Jeff Singer, of Jeff Singer Photography.