Lara
Fowler

Lara Fowler is an attorney and mediator who focuses on environmental, energy, and natural resource law, with a specific focus on water-related issues. She is the director of the Sustainability Institute and the University’s chief sustainability officer, and a Professor of Teaching for Penn State Law. Her work focuses on flood resilience in Pennsylvania, water-resource rights, water issues in the Chesapeake Bay, and the energy transition. Fowler’s areas of expertise include climate change law and policy.

Prior to joining Penn State, she was an attorney in Seattle, Washington, where she focused on mediation and dispute resolution of complex natural resource issues, as well as representing clients facing regulatory hurdles in the environmental and energy fields. She has worked on issues such as who is entitled to store groundwater in the greater Los Angeles area; flooding issues in the Chehalis Basin, Washington State’s second-largest river basin; and energy issues in the Pacific Northwest. Before pursuing a legal career, she was a senior water resources coordinator with the Oregon Water Resources Department.