SCHOLAR DIRECTORY

Lauren Starr is pursuing a PhD in Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on palliative and end-of-life care. She is researching the measurement of pain in persons with advanced dementia, and the connection between caregiver empathy and pain management in the same population. Prior to graduating from Penn’s accelerated BSN program in 2015 and becoming a Registered Nurse, Lauren cared for her husband’s 103-year-old grandfather, who lived and died at home with them. She is in Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. Lauren graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 2004 with a degree in English literature, a certificate in American Studies, and a focus in Bioethics. After graduation, she worked for the Bioethics Advisory Committee of Singapore and the Genome Institute of Singapore on the genome project of Asia and legislation protecting human subjects in research. She is a 2004-2005 Henry Luce Scholar. Upon returning to the U.S., Lauren worked for the Advisory Board Company in Washington DC as a research analyst in hospital consulting. She then spent three years working at Google in New York City as a healthcare market analyst in research and marketing across sales and product development. After working in the start-up world, Lauren worked for Scripps Networks Interactive in New York as a Digital Research and Analytics Manager finding stories in data and making data meaningful and actionable for sales and programming teams. Lauren’s mentors are Mary Ersek, PhD, RN, FAAN and Christine Bradway, PhD, RN, CRNP, FAAN.