She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in Government. After Harvard, Setrakian worked as a business analyst with McKinsey & Company. Setrakian speaks Arabic, Armenian, English, French and Spanish, and has studied Persian and Portuguese. In 2012, Setrakian founded Syria Deeply, a platform covering the war in Syria, addressing a gap in in-depth media coverage of conflict zones and serving an underserved niche audience that was “thirsty to understand more.” Receiving positive responses and great interest in single-issue sites, Setrakian launched a second platform, Ebola Deeply (archived), addressing the West African Ebola virus epidemic. Since then more platforms covering geopolitical, health and environmental issues have been added to the News Deeply network, which has been called a “new model of impact journalism”. As a fellow of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2014, Setrakian authored a landmark paper on vertical, or single-subject news sites a rising trend in digital publishing. In her TED talk in January 2017, Setrakian made the case that some of the ideas she founded News Deeply on were relevant for the crisis-ridden news industry, describing journalism as “adult education” and advocating for embracing complexity “in order to make sense of a complex world.” In an opinion piece for the Washington Post Setrakian spoke out on allegations of sexual harassment against political journalist Mark Halperin. She wrote about the systematic implications of such behavior and repercussions for the news industry, calling Halperin part of a bigger problem that needs to be fixed. She was one of several women who had been harassed by him working at ABC News and were mentioned in a report by CNN. In a subsequent interview with Judy Woodruff for PBS News Hour she said, “I think there’s a generational shift. I think there’s a mindset shift” around workplace norms and sexual assault. In September 2018, News Deeply laid off staff members and cut some of its publications including Oceans Deeply, Malnutrition Deeply, and Peacebuilding Deeply. In an email comment to Fast Company, Lara confirmed the changes and added that the company’s model “allows us to pop up and fold down thematic platforms. It’s always sad for us to see any of them go dark. Letting go of colleagues when that happens is the hardest part of my job as a CEO.”