While completing her doctorate in the history at UCLA, Laura York began her career in health and healthcare research at the Veterans Health Administration, preparing journal articles and patient educational materials in the Center of Excellence for the Study of Provider Behavior. Promoted to project manager, she oversaw two major projects: a multisite tobacco control implementation study with a clinical trial component (TeleQUIT) and a quality improvement project that developed clinical care toolkits for use across the VA system (VA Quality Improvement Toolkit Series).
Laura then pivoted back to higher education with ETS, first as an essay scoring leader for the GRE program, then as a test unit developer for the English Language Arts component of the SAT exam.
In 2020, she returned to health research at the University of Arizona, first as a regulatory coordinator in the UA Cancer Center's Clinical Trials Office, then as a research administrator and regulatory manager at the Center for Innovation in Brain Science (CIBS), where she supported the launch of the Precision Aging Network study ($60M, NIH 1U19AG065169). Her final role at UA was UA Health Sciences research administrator, supporting federal and philanthropic grant proposals for medical, pharmacology, and population health researchers.
In 2024, Laura joined ASU's Knowledge Enterprise Research Development team as proposal manager. In this role, she works closely with principal investigators, Research Advancement Administrators, and ASU units campuswide to manage the proposal development process and ensure compliant, effective research funding proposals.
Laura is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with a microcredential in Agile project management. She also hold the Foundation certificate in proposal management and a microcredential in Bid & Proposal Writing from the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP).