Laura works across strategic planning, facilitation, community engagement, grant making, cultural equity, cultural policy, capital project master planning, management, and funding issues at AEA, helping clients work through complex policy and governance issues to reach actionable strategies. She has contributed to projects for the Cities of San Diego, West Hollywood, Santa Clarita and Santa Maria, and UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts.

Before joining AEA, Laura led the implementation of large regional cultural initiatives as Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, where she oversaw grants programs, civic art, a regional plan for arts education, the arts intern program in conjunction with the Getty Trust, the Ford Amphitheatre, cultural tourism, and the county’s first cultural equity initiative. She was Director of the Center for Business & Management of the Arts at Claremont Graduate University, where she taught master’s-level classes in arts organization dynamics, cross-sector work in the arts, and cultural policy.

Laura is interested in how organizations of any size can create meaning in peoples’ lives and impact communities, and the systems needed to support this work.

She has continued in her role as an arts funder as president of the board of The Music Man Foundation and served on the boards of Grantmakers in the Arts; the Association of Arts Administration Educators; and the Trusteeship, the Southern California Chapter of the International Women’s Forum. She was a founding board member of Arts for LA, which created the Laura Zucker Cultural Policy Fellowship. Laura holds a BA from Barnard College and attended the Yale School of Drama.