George Mason Facilities & Campus Operations (F&CO) would like to extend a warm welcome to our new Senior Director of Energy and Sustainability, Lara Spader. Joining us in late 2025, Lara has begun her role in overseeing our Energy, Sustainability, and Central Heating & Cooling (CHCP) teams, bringing them together for the first time at George Mason University. Click here for the updated 2026 F&CO Organizational Chart.
For her new team, she aims to support the continued integration and alignment of energy and sustainability priorities with university goals, while pursuing opportunities to optimize energy use and modernize utility infrastructure. In addition to bringing the Energy, Sustainability, and CHCP teams together, she plans to build an additional strong coalition of partnerships that will work together to make George Mason University operate as efficiently, reliably, and sustainably as possible for today and in the future. With an extensive professional background in sustainable efforts for energy and infrastructure, we are eager to see her continued progress at George Mason.
"I am thrilled to be joining the George Mason community, and contributing to the exciting work ahead," said Spader. "With the new integrated team, I am looking forward to learning, collaborating, and achieving great things together!"
Before joining George Mason, Lara Spader served as a Program Manager in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. In this role, she co-led the Industrial Demonstrations Program responsible for managing the execution of $6.3 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act to support large-scale emissions reduction demonstration projects.
Previously, Lara worked at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as the Director of the Energy, Environment and Fleet Program Service. Within that role, she oversaw VA’s Department-wide policy and programs for energy and water management, energy performance contracting, fleet management, environmental management, sustainable buildings, and climate change adaptation.
Prior to that, she was the Program Manager for VA’s nationwide Energy Performance Contracting Program with oversight of over $1 billion of energy efficiency projects at VA medical centers. Lara joined the Federal government as a Presidential Management Fellow, served a detail at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and was a 2020 VA Congressional Fellow at the U.S. House of Representatives. She is a Certified Energy Manager with a Master of Business Administration from the George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science in Management from Boston University.