Lacrosse, Reindeer Moss and Early-Career Pivots: Lindsay Lare’s Unconventional Path to Data Eminence

By her own telling, Lindsay Lare’s athletic background was foundational to her personal and professional lives. She grew up in Cape May, New Jersey, and received a full scholarship to play lacrosse at the University of New Haven and, later, at Montclair State University. Since graduating, she has remained close to the game, coaching third- and fourth-graders (“I managed the bench, the field and the parents,” she quips wryly) and playing pickup games when the spirit moves her.

But while lacrosse has always been a valuable outlet for Lare – even now, her first instinct is “to run around and shoot if I feel like I need to throw a ball through something” – it taught her everything about downplaying her personal conquests in pursuit of a higher collaborative goal.

“I played attack and midfield, so it was always about forcing a turnover or scoring a goal or whatever it took for the team to succeed,” she says. “That’s how I’ve been my entire life.”

That team-first, find-a-way-to-win mentality has carried over into a career that, in less than a decade, has seen Lare establish herself as one of the rare young leaders with data chops that match her relationship-nurturing ones. Currently executive director, data and analytics, at rising health-tech and data firm Flora Health, Lare carries herself with a confidence that belies her young age and relatively short industry experience.

“Within a week of Lindsay starting here, we were like, ‘How did we ever get by without her?’” recalls Flora Health chief product officer Shannon Pfeffer. “She makes everyone around her better.”

A subtle reinvention

The path Lare took to her current role wasn’t a traditional one – and nearly resulted in her departure from the business just a short while ago. She had an interest in healthcare from an early age, which was fueled by her participation in a high school program allowing her to shadow different departments in a local hospital. After graduating with a degree in biology, Lare pivoted into sales for medical device firms Hiossen and Hillrom, which gave her new insight into a broad range of medical environments. Hillrom thought highly enough of Lare to underwrite her Master of Business Administration degree, which she completed virtually during the pandemic.

But Covid-era restrictions prevented Lare from going out into the field as much as she once did, which prompted some concern about her professional standing. “I was thinking, ‘How do I keep my job?’” she recalls.

Lare headed off any such worries by moonlighting with Hillrom’s marketing group, which happily took her up on her offer to contribute. Before long, her resume caught the eye of a recruiter from IQVIA, which brought her on board as senior production business analyst, digital advertising.

There was, not surprisingly, a knowledge gap to narrow. “I went out to dinner with my parents and they asked me about the job and company. My husband ended up answering most of their questions, because he knew more about it at the time than I did,” Lare says.

She found herself intrigued by the rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape, and especially the vast troves of data that undergirded it. While pursuing her MBA, Lare had taken a marketing class and instantly connected with the material. That gave her a leg up on many of her peers, as did the clinical knowledge she accumulated during her time in device sales. She soon found herself working on complex data asks from some of the world’s largest pharma companies.

“I just fell in love with data, which sounds so nerdy,” she says. “For me, it’s fun digging through the weeds to find a solution to a problem.”

Lare left IQVIA in November 2022 to join Lumanity as omnichannel marketing and analytics lead, thus adding agency experience to a resume that already included clinical-, brand- and vendor-side posts. In her new role, she gained operational and executional knowledge on running campaigns across different channels.

“It brought all my other experiences together,” Lare says, adding that the agency environment is not for the faint of heart. “It will test you. It really molds you as a professional.”

Back in the fold

Lare arrived at Flora last July, lured by the opportunity to own and evolve the company’s EvergreenIQ data intelligence platform. But before she accepted the offer, she nearly left healthcare entirely.

Over the years, Lare’s creative side has manifested itself in numerous ways, particularly in the custom large-scale pieces of art she created from plant, reindeer moss and other organic materials (and then sold to residential and commercial clients) and in a passion for antiques (“vintage anything, really”). Feeling unfulfilled and slightly burned out, she applied to design school and was accepted at the New York School of Interior Design, among others.

“I had a portfolio and everything, then my job ended shortly thereafter. It was like, ‘Maybe this was meant to be,’” she says.

A pitch from Flora CEO Angelo Campano brought Lare back into the health-media fold. Now, nearly seven months into her Flora tenure, she’s even more of a believer in the platform and the coordination among health stakeholders it helps effect.

Joey Cohen, Flora’s executive director-EHR strategy, says that Lare’s impact was felt immediately. “I had been doing a lot of what she was hired to do on the data side, which is not my forte at all, but I felt I should be in some of the early meetings with Lindsay and clients to make sure everything stayed on track,” he recalls. “About five minutes into the first meeting, it was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t need to be here.’”

Lare expects 2026 to be a formative year for Flora, with generating broader company/brand awareness among the items on her to-do list. She will continue to serve as VP of The Luke Lare Memorial Scholarship Foundation, established to honor the memory of her younger brother. She’s attempting to dial back her workaholic tendencies – “my new year’s resolution is to get better about making more time for myself,” she says – which she hopes will leave her with more bandwidth for lacrosse, design and summer weekends back home in Cape May.

Her Flora colleagues predict big things. “The way Lindsay shows up in the world personally and professionally – she’s going to be running something before too long,” Pfeffer says. “Some people just have it. That’s Lindsay.”

This profile is part of the solli Elevate series, celebrating the Next Generation of Pharma Media Leaders. View all profiles here.