Lauren is the youngest, as well as the only female, SHAC 7 defendant. She is a magna cum laude graduate of New York University, where she was a student in NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized study. She first became involved in animal rights activism by way of the university's animal rights group, Students for Education on Animal Liberation (SEAL). With SEAL, Lauren protested against animal testing at NYU (which, at the time, had paid the largest fine ever for violations of the Animal Welfare Act) and campaigned to implement vegan food options in NYU's dining halls. This latter effort resulted in a substantial increase in vegan options in the dining halls, including a vegan entrée now offered at every meal, as well as once-monthly events, wherein NYU's dining halls were entirely vegan for a full day (Lauren graduated in December of 2000 and, to this day, NYU still holds monthly vegan dinners in its dining halls). The vegan food program at NYU has served as a model for similar programs subsequently implemented at colleges and universities around the country.

Also during her time at NYU, Lauren participated in a student campaign to retire nearly three dozen chimpanzees who had been subjected to crack-cocaine experiments at NYU's upstate laboratory known as the LEMSIP (Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates). After incurring exorbitant fines for animal welfare violations, NYU chose to close LEMSIP, rather than finance those improvements that would have been required to render it compliant with animal welfare standards. As such, NYU began transferring nearly 300 chimpanzees to notorious toxicologist Fred Coulston in New Mexico. By the time Lauren arrived at NYU in September of 1997, only a few dozen chimpanzees remained at LEMSIP, and some of the NYU chimps who had been transferred to The Coulston Foundation had already died due to negligence and poor care (in one instance, an NYU chimp died after a faulty heater at the Foundation broke and temperatures in the facility soared).

With little time remaining as NYU prepared to transfer the chimpanzees remaining at LEMSIP to Coulston, and after protests, letter writing, and meetings with university officials had done nothing to stop the transfer, the students decided they had no time left to waste. On the morning of November 11, 1997, Lauren and 15 other NYU students walked into then-NYU President L. Jay Oliva's office and announced their demand that the remaining chimpanzees at LEMSIP be retired to sanctuaries rather than transferred to The Coulston Foundation - and that they were not leaving Oliva's office until this demand was met. According to NYU's student newspaper, The Washington Square News, the students had "brought food and were prepared to stay." Though threatened with expulsion and arrest, and all manner of promises if they would simply move from the office to a conference room on another floor (NYU even called the students' parents in the middle of the night in an effort to convince the students to leave), the students held their ground and, after less than 24 hours in Oliva's office, walked out with a signed statement from the head of the NYU's Medical Center and the Vice President of Academic Affairs that the remaining chimpanzees at LEMSIP would be retired to sanctuaries and not sold to The Coulston Foundation.

Since that time, Lauren has been involved in various anti-fur campaigns, vegan outreach, and general movement-building efforts.

In addition to her animal rights work, Lauren has directed her efforts towards various issues of social justice and social equality. While at NYU she worked as a tutor to inner-city youth in elementary schools as part of the America Reads/America Counts program. She also volunteered doing literacy work with low income adults at The Grand Street Settlement on New York City's Lower East Side.

After graduating from NYU she worked for a time for In Defense of Animals (the second largest animal rights organization in the U.S.), and later for StirFry Seminars, a small consulting company working to combat racism, sexism, and homophobia. StirFry Seminars conducts seminars nationwide on these issues for non-profit organizations, large companies, and even - ironically - the federal government. Unfortunately Lauren had to leave her work at StirFry when she went to trial for the SHAC 7 case.

Prior to being indicted in the SHAC 7 case, Lauren was also a defendant in a Massachusetts case, charged with four state felonies in relation to her alleged participation in a home demonstration in Boston. Her crime? Allegedly participating in a chant which was, according to the Massachusetts Attorney General, "threatening". For this, she was indicted on charges of extortion, threats to commit a crime, and conspiracy to commit both, and faced an aggregate of 28 years in prison.

Represented by the former head of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild, David Nathanson, Gazzola filed a pre-trial motion to dismiss the charges on First Amendment grounds. According to Gazzola's motion, the alleged chant "occurs approximately three times total in the space of less than twenty seconds in the context of demonstrations that lasted for hours. The police were present at the time of these statements and made no arrests." (The demonstration was alleged to have occurred in August 2002; no arrests were made at the time, but Lauren and several other activists were subsequently indicted in October 2002 based on video tapes of the events.)

On February 6, 2004, in an opinion firmly denouncing the indictments, Superior Court Justice Janet L. Sanders dismissed the indictments in advance of trial on First Amendment grounds. Read the opinion here. Three an a half months later, Lauren was arrested by the FBI along with the other SHAC 7 defendants.

Until her arrest in the SHAC 7 case, Lauren had been working towards applying law school, with the ultimate goal of practicing First Amendment law and defending activists against civil and criminal actions brought against them based on their participation in protest activity. Lauren was arrested less than two weeks before she was scheduled to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). She'd planned to apply to law school in September of 2004, but put her plans on hold pending the outcome of the trial, and now the appeal. She rescheduled her LSAT, took the test while the federal case was pending, and scored in the 97th percentile (and, as a result, was invited to teach the LSAT for a test preparation company, a position she enjoyed until returning to NJ for trial).

Over the past several years, she has been mentored by several outstanding First Amendment attorneys, most notably Chicago attorney, and board member of both the Free Speech Coalition and First Amendment Lawyer's Association, Reed Lee. Additionally, she was thrilled to be represented in the SHAC 7 case by renowned First Amendment attorney H. Louis Sirkin, who counts among his clients in First Amendment cases Robert Mapplethorpe, Larry Flint & Hustler Magazine, and the rap group N.W.A.

Lauren extends her thanks to all those who have supported her and her codefendants since they were arrested. She encourages all those who care about the animals to double their efforts and ensure that, though the animals have lost six great activists for a time, the strength of a movement of thousands around the world has not been diminished.