Lara Diamond

Lara Diamond began researching her own family around 1989. She has traced all branches of her family multiple generations back in Europe using Russian Empire-era and Austria-Hungarian Empire records. Most of her personal research is in modern-day Ukraine, with a smattering of Belarus and Poland. She has done client research leading to their ancestors in many parts of the former USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and more.

Lara leverages her mathematics background and her endogamous Ashkenazic genome to augment document-based research with genetic genealogy and teaches how others can have successes in genetic genealogy in endogamous situations.

She is president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland, leads JewishGen's Subcarpathian SIG, and is on JewishGen's Ukraine SIG's board of directors. She has lectured around the country and internationally on Jewish and Eastern European genealogy research as well as genetic genealogy. She also runs multiple district- and town-focused projects to collect documentation to assist all those researching ancestors from common towns. Lara blogs about DNA and her Eastern European research at her blog.