Dr. Abigail (Abbey) Lara is a Director of the Office of Professional Excellence (OPE) and is a practicing pulmonary and critical care physician in the Department of Medicine and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She is the medical director of Medical-Surgical Progressive Care Unit and maintains an active outpatient clinic and attends in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at the University of Colorado Hospital. She served as the associate Program Director of the PCCM Fellowship training program for 4 years and as the Program Director for 2 years before stepping down to take the role of Director of the Office of Professional Excellence in 2018. 

Dr. Lara received her B.A (psychology) and B.S. (Microbiology) from the University of California San Diego and her M.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed her internal medicine residency at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, followed by a research fellowship at the Lerner Research Institute in Cleveland. She completed her pulmonary and critical care medicine training at the University of Colorado and has been on faculty since 2008. She is married, is an avid outdoorswoman, an amateur archer and a certified scuba dive master.