Lara Naughton is a New Orleans-based writer, teacher and compassion trainer. With more than twenty years teaching and facilitation experience, she has worked with K-12 students as well as adults, and has led classes/workshops/retreats with individuals who have faced challenging circumstances, including homelessness, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, wrongful conviction, incarceration, and torture.

She is a certified Compassion Cultivation Trainer through the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, Chair of Creative Writing at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and Director of CompassionNOLA. She currently offers CCT in the New Orleans area, and at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. She also offers Compassion and Personal Narrative Writing workshops across the country. Her writing includes the documentary stage play Never Fight A Shark in Water: The Wrongful Conviction of Gregory Bright, and memoir The Jaguar Man.