In 1995, Lauren brought Community Conferencing to Baltimore. She advances conferencing as a means of building social capital and collective efficacy on many levels, including empowering individuals and communities to resolve their own conflicts, keeping young people out of the criminal justice system, and mobilizing the existing untapped human assets in communities. Lauren publishes articles on both the theoretical and empirical socio-political aspects of conferencing. The work of the Community Conferencing Center is ground breaking for its multi-sector use of conferencing in highly distressed urban American communities.