Lara Srivastava is Senior Policy Analyst and ITU New Initiatives Programme Manager with the Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Lara has over 10 years of experience in the telecommunication industry. She is currently responsible for monitoring and analyzing trends in information and communication technology, policy, and market structure, with a particular focus on mobile and wireless communications. In this context, she authors and edits publications produced by the ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit. These include digital.life (2006), The Internet of Things (2005), The Portable Internet (2004), The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services (2006), Shaping the Future Mobile Information Society (2004) and Ubiquitous Network Societies (2005). Lara is also reponsible for organizing and advising on workshops and symposia programmes, covering topics of interest to policymakers, regulators and industry. She acts as Programme Manager for ITU's New Initiatives Programme, and contributes to programme development for the global ITU TELECOM Forum.

Lara has published in journals such as Behaviour and Information Technology, INFO and Telecommunications Policy, and in books such as Mobile Understanding: The Epistemology of Ubiquitous Communication (2006, Passagen Verlag), Asia Unplugged (2005, Sage Publications) and Thumb Culture (2005, Bielefeld), on topics ranging from the mobile Internet and market regulation to the growing nexus between technology and society. She has been invited as guest lecturer and speaker by a number of academic institutions and international conferences.

Before joining ITU in January 2000, Lara worked for the Legal Department of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC), the Technical University of Delft (Netherlands) as a Research Fellow in telecommunication regulatory reform, and for the UK-based telecommunication consultancy Analysys as part of its management consultant team. She has also had the opportunity to work for an Internet start-up company, App-Tap, as strategic manager.

Lara holds a B.A Honours (Canada/France), an M.A. in Literature (Canada), an LL.B specializing in communications law (Canada), an Advanced Post-Graduate Diploma in International Law and Telecommunications (France), and an M.Sc. in Technology Policy (United Kingdom). Lara is a qualified barrister and solicitor, and a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada.