Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Lara Okanlawon.
Dr. Lara, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’m a first-generation Nigerian American and the eldest daughter, so in many ways, I joke that I came out of the womb serving. Caring for people, paying attention to what others need, and figuring out how to make things better has always felt deeply embedded in who I am. I’ve been married to my wonderful husband, Tola for 12 years and I am the mother to the two most energetic children on the planet, Levi-Josiah and Zion-Lael.
One of the earliest experiences that shaped me happened when I was eight years old on my first trip to Nigeria. I remember seeing men and women who appeared to be living with significant mental illness begging on the side of the road. At eight, I didn’t have the clinical language to understand what I was seeing, but I understood that these were people who were hurting, vulnerable, and often overlooked. That experience became a core memory for me. It planted an early sense of empathy for people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, or navigating circumstances that make it easy for the world to stop seeing the person underneath the struggle.
That curiosity and compassion eventually led me into clinical psychology. Over the years, I have had the privilege of working with people across incredibly diverse environments, including psychiatric hospitals, detention centers, prisons, schools, community settings, and corporate spaces. I have worked alongside individuals experiencing severe mental illness, families navigating difficult seasons, professionals carrying more than anyone around them realizes, and organizations trying to figure out how to care for people well.
Those experiences taught me something that continues to shape everything I do: people want to be seen. Not fixed or reduced to a diagnosis, title, circumstance, or difficult moment. They want to be Seen.
My career has developed around learning how to meet people where they are while also helping individuals, relationships, and organizations become healthier versions of themselves. Over time, I realized that this calling was much bigger than one job title or one traditional career path. The psychologist in me, the facilitator in me, the relationship builder in me, the entrepreneur in me, and even the woman who loves bringing energy into a room all needed space to exist.
Today, that has manifested itself primarily through three ventures.
Through Anchored Restoration Solutions, my mental health consulting firm, I work with organizations to create healthier people and healthier systems through mental health education, capacity-building initiatives, immersive learning experiences, and strategic consultation. I am super passionate about moving conversations about mental health beyond awareness and helping organizations think practically about culture, leadership, psychological safety, and sustainable wellness.
Marriage Pinnacle is the relationship support platform I co-founded with my lifelong friend, Memi Oladapo. Marriage Pinnacle was born from our shared belief that healthy relationships don’t just happen. They require tools, community, intentionality, and honest conversations. We wanted to create something that reflected the cultural experiences of couples of color while making relationship education feel accessible, engaging, and relevant. Through education, community, resources, events, and storytelling, we are helping couples build healthier relationships and, ultimately, healthier communities.
Lastly, The DocMC, which looks completely different on the surface but is actually connected to that same love of people. The DocMC is the moniker I use for my event hosting and MC work, where I get to help clients bring beautiful, elevated, luxe experiences to life. I love reading a room, creating connection, celebrating people well, and helping an event feel like an experience rather than simply a gathering.
When I step back, I realize that none of these things are actually separate.
Whether I am standing in front of corporate leaders talking about mental health, creating a podcast episode for couples talking about accountability, or holding a mic in a ballroom helping a family celebrate one of the biggest moments of their lives, I am doing some version of the same thing: creating spaces where people feel seen, connected, supported, and able to thrive.
My path hasn’t been perfectly linear, but I have learned that purpose rarely is. Every environment I have worked in and every person I have encountered has added another layer to how I understand people, leadership, relationships, culture, and community.
Being able to take all of those experiences, gifts, and parts of myself and use them to build things that positively impact other people is one of the greatest blessings of my life. And I feel like I am still just getting started.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Of course not!
Even getting to this point professionally came with its own challenges. Navigating a doctoral program, completing the required training, and eventually sitting for the licensing exam was a journey in itself. There were years of sacrifice, long hours, delayed gratification, and moments where I had to remind myself why I started.
But entrepreneurship has challenged me in a completely different way.
I recently heard someone say, “Isolation is expensive,” and that stayed with me because it captures something I don’t think we talk about enough. When you have been conditioned to value the stability of a traditional 9-to-5, stepping into entrepreneurship can feel incredibly uncomfortable. There is no guaranteed paycheck, no built-in team, and no department down the hall handling marketing, operations, finance, strategy, or business development.
It’s ALL ON ME.
The vision may be exciting, but so is the responsibility. You are responsible for the work, the systems, the follow-up, the marketing, the relationships, the invoices, the opportunities, and the gaps between opportunities. You work, you get paid. And when you do not work…well, you know.
One of my biggest lessons has been learning that talent alone is not enough to build something sustainable. You can be gifted, passionate, and excellent at what you do, but without discipline, systems and structure, every opportunity can begin to feel like you are starting from scratch.
Across each of my ventures, I have had to learn how to create processes that allow a one-time opportunity to become a relationship, a relationship to become a partnership, and a partnership to become something sustainable. That has meant learning parts of business ownership that did not necessarily come naturally to me: building workflows, documenting processes, strengthening my marketing, setting boundaries around my time, understanding my value, and being intentional about how I steward opportunities. All things I am ACTIVELY still walking through.
I have also learned that entrepreneurship was never meant to be done completely alone. Being in community with other women who are building businesses, taking risks, figuring things out, and experiencing similar highs and lows has been incredibly fulfilling. Sometimes you need strategy. Sometimes you need accountability. And sometimes you simply need someone who understands what it feels like to believe deeply in something that has not fully materialized yet.
And above everything else, this journey has deepened my dependence on God.
Entrepreneurship has a way of exposing the places where you want control. There have been seasons when the opportunities were abundant, and there have been seasons when there were gaps and I had to trust that a quiet calendar did not mean the vision was wrong. I have had to learn the difference between being still and being stagnant, between preparing and striving, and having faith and hoping things work out.
The road has definitely not been smooth, but I think the challenges have made me a more thoughtful business owner, a more grounded leader, and a better steward of the opportunities that do come my way.
I’ll say it again… I am still learning and I am still building. I’m also becoming increasingly comfortable with the fact that both can be true at the same time.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Dr. Lara O?
At the center of everything I do is Dr. Lara.
I am a psychologist, facilitator, consultant, relationship educator, and host, and over time I realized that I didn’t have to stick to one professional lane. The same gifts show up across everything I build: understanding people, creating connections, translating complex ideas into practical tools, and helping individuals and communities become healthier.
That work currently manifests in three clear ways. Through Anchored Restoration Solutions (ARS), I operate as a mental health consultant and strategist. ARS is a mental health consulting firm focused on creating healthier people and healthier systems through mental health education, capacity-building initiatives, immersive learning experiences, and strategic consultation. I work with organizations that want to move beyond surface-level wellness conversations and think more intentionally about culture, leadership, psychological safety, and how people actually experience the systems they work within.
What I believe sets my work apart is the ability to bring clinical expertise into spaces without making the conversation feel overly clinical. I want people to understand the psychology, but I also want them to know what to do with it. My goal is always to make mental health education culturally responsive, relatable, practical, and applicable to real life.
That same commitment to healthier people is the bedrock of Marriage Pinnacle, the relationship support platform I co-founded with my lifelong friend, Memi Oladapo. Marriage Pinnacle exists because we believe couples deserve tools before they reach crisis. We create clinically informed, culturally relevant relationship education through courses, conversation tools, digital resources, community experiences, events, and media.
We are especially intentional about serving couples of color and creating spaces where conversations about love, dating, marriage, conflict, intimacy, faith, and partnership can feel both meaningful and accessible. One of the things I am most proud of is that we have created a community where relationship education doesn’t have to feel intimidating. We can talk about serious things and still bringing culture, humor, honesty, and real life into everything we do.
Then The DocMC, is where Dr. Lara comes alive. As The DocMC, I provide event hosting, emceeing, and moderation for weddings, milestone celebrations, corporate events, nonprofit gatherings, panels, and other experiences. Hosting can look very different from clinical work or consulting, but to me, it draws from a lot of the same skills. You have to understand people, read a room, manage energy, create connections, communicate clearly, and know when the moment needs structure and when it needs spontaneity.
I say that holding a mic is the smallest part of being a great host. The real work is creating an environment where people feel engaged and where the experience feels intentional from beginning to end.
What I am most proud of across all three is that I have built brands that allow me to show up fully as myself.
For a long time, there was this idea that success meant choosing one lane and staying in it. I have found the opposite to be true for me. My clinical background makes me a stronger facilitator. My facilitation experience makes me a better host. My work with relationships informs how I think about communication and organizational culture. My cultural experiences shape how I connect with people. My faith shapes how I understand service and stewardship.
It is all me, it’s all Dr. Lara. So whether I am helping an organization become more psychologically healthy, giving a couple tools to communicate better, facilitating a meaningful conversation, or helping a bride celebrate the most important day of her life, I want people to leave feeling seen, connected, equipped, and better because of the experience.
That is what I want readers to understand most about my brands. They are three different vehicles, but they are all driven by the same purpose which is helping people and the spaces they occupy become healthier.
What were you like growing up?
I was very outgoing growing up. I loved people, loved being social, and was always somewhere in the mix. I love movies and game nights and food!
One of the biggest shifts for me came when I went to boarding school in Nigeria my 11th-grade year. I learned so much about myself and that experience made me more self-assured and gave me a much deeper connection to my Nigerian heritage. It helped me understand myself in a different way.
At the same time, being a first-generation Nigerian American and the eldest daughter came with a lot of responsibility. Making my parents proud, avoiding disappointment, and living up to high expectations were very real parts of growing up.
I think a lot of my adulthood has been learning how to hold both: honoring where I come from while also becoming more confident in who I am and the life I feel called to build.
Contact Info:
- Website: Https://www.anchoredrestoration.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marriagepinnacle?stkn=MTRoM3B5eng5ZHA4bQ==
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlaraoks?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@marriagepinnacle?si=KgHjwOAtLr_Go8Ji
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/thedocmc?stkn=MTk1NDZzdGZnejRmNg==
