Lisa is the president and CEO of Impact Fellows Action Fund (IF), a new organization providing state advocates with the missing tool in the advocacy box. She also sits on the Impact Fellows Board in addition to her role as President and CEO of the organization. IF picks up where traditional advocacy leaves off by adding crucial funding and technical assistance supports for political action that’s necessary to achieve the big and sustained impacts that can transform the lives of generations of young children and their families.

Before founding IF, Lisa served as the first executive director of the Alliance for Early Success, a pooled fund for state advocacy aimed at improving health, education and family outcomes for young children from birth through age 8. She helped create the Alliance as an independent organization and over 11 years was responsible for oversight of the vision, mission and operations. She grew the Alliance into a 50-state network of state advocacy and national expert organizations supported by a pooled fund of $11 million.

Lisa brings 10 years of philanthropic experience to IF, having served the Kauffman Foundation as the manager of research and evaluation and then as vice president of early education grantmaking. Her policy experience includes serving as director of early childhood at the Kansas Health Institute, where she helped educate and inform the governor and state legislature on early childhood policy, and as principal of Hestia Advising, an independent consulting firm focused on improving programs and policies for young children and families.

Lisa’s real, on-the-ground experience in what children and families need to be successful was formed from 10 years of direct clinical service work. She was the director of the partial hospital program at Crittenton Children’s Center and a staff psychologist providing mental and behavioral health services at Marillac Center for Children.

She has a bachelor’s degree from Occidental College in California, a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in psychology from the University of Kansas, a doctorate degree in psychology from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a one-year postdoctorate fellowship in child development and family systems from the Menninger Institute. Her lifelong mate is Jim; she is the proud mom of Samantha and Jessica and mom-in-law to Mike, and grandmother to Paxton.