Karina Lara

Karina Lara is a Senior Sales Analyst at Chariot Energy in Houston, Texas, where she plays a key role in the company's commercial sales organization and has recently been tapped to help establish its sales operations function as the business continues to scale. With more than eight years of experience in the energy sector, she has built a career centered on commercial sales, pricing strategy, and operational efficiency within deregulated markets, bringing a strong command of contract administration, data validation, and cross-functional coordination to every role she has held. Her work supports revenue-critical processes across Commercial & Industrial accounts, and she has consistently shown a talent for spotting inefficiencies and engineering smarter workflows in their place.

Lara's path into the energy industry began in 2018, following an earlier chapter in the nonprofit sector where she worked as a bilingual program assistant supporting parenting education initiatives in the Houston community. Since making that transition, she has advanced steadily through a series of increasingly strategic positions, starting in business development before moving into pricing desk operations, energy procurement consulting, and ultimately sales analysis and leadership. Along the way, she has managed high-volume deal flow, partnered with IT teams to introduce automation into contract management, and overseen an offshore support team to resolve longstanding processing bottlenecks. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Sociology, she also holds a Business Foundations Certification and was an active member of Kappa Delta Chi Sorority, Inc. during her time on campus.

Beyond her professional accomplishments, Lara is guided by a deep commitment to lifelong learning, self-advocacy, and mindfulness, values she credits as the foundation of her career growth. She regularly seeks out networking events, mentorship, and educational opportunities to keep sharpening her skills, and she carries that same spirit of development into her community involvement. Earlier in her career, she volunteered as a rap instructor at a Houston-based breakdance nonprofit, teaching entrepreneurship skills to local youth, and she remains an advocate for young women navigating male-dominated industries like her own, encouraging them to trust their instincts and stand firmly in their own value.