Lara Saade

Lara Saade is a governance leader and senior legal and public policy expert who has helped shape Lebanon's constitutional, justice, and gender equality reforms over the past two decades, working at the intersection of constitutional law, justice reform, gender equality, and the rule of law in Lebanon and across the MENA region.

She currently serves as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Minister of Justice of Lebanon, where she plays a central role in shaping national justice reform priorities and advises on legislative and institutional transformation. In this capacity, she works closely with government institutions, the judiciary, parliament, and international partners including UN agencies, the EU Delegation, World Bank, and IMF, to advance key reform initiatives.

Across more than 17 years in parliament, government, UN agencies, and regional institutions, she has authored or co-authored some of Lebanon's most consequential legislative and constitutional reforms, including the law that ended honor crimes and the constitutional challenges that produced the jurisprudence forcing Lebanon's first state budget in twelve years. Her areas of expertise include strengthening judicial independence, anti-corruption and transparency frameworks, financial integrity systems including FATF/AML-CFT compliance, beneficial ownership transparency, and asset recovery mechanisms.

Her work combines legislative drafting, institutional design, political economy analysis, and reform sequencing. She is particularly recognized for translating international standards into operational legal and institutional frameworks that can function in complex political environments, and for designing legal strategies that turn constitutional text into political practice.

Alongside her governance and reform work,Lara chairs the Committee on Women’s Participation in Decision-Making at the National Commission for Lebanese Women (NCLW), and serves as the national focal point for the Women, Peace, and Security agenda.

She lectures part-time at Notre Dame University and has published on constitutional law, governance reform, rule of law, human rights, and gender equality in Lebanon and the Arab region.

She holds a Master's degree in Public Law from Paris-Saclay University (France), a postgraduate degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University (USA), and is completing a PhD in Public Law at the University of Rennes (France).

She is fluent in Arabic, English, and French, and has working knowledge of Spanish.