Consultant Profile
Lisa is an experienced organizational consultant focusing on strategic planning, with particular expertise in facilitating dialogue between groups in conflict. She is also a mediator, team-builder, and conflict resolution instructor and trainer who is very knowledgeable about charities, immigration and settlement, and post-secondary institutions.
Philosophically, Lisa is committed to self-reflection and learning from life experience, including in-depth analysis of her own positionality and identity — an approach she brings to working with others. Her style is participatory and facilitative rather than directive, and she encourages critical analysis and complexity, particularly in relation to controversial social issues. She is also experienced in translating theory and research into practice.
Lisa holds a Ph.D., with ethnographic fieldwork focused on refugee-led organizations. Her academic interests and expertise interface with African Studies, political science, ethnic and political conflict, human rights, minority rights, and migrants with precarious legal status, including asylum seekers and migrant workers. For over 20 years she has worked as an organizational consultant with and for human rights and social change organizations in cross-cultural contexts, with particular expertise in the Middle East and East Africa.
More recently, she has taught at a number of post-secondary institutions in the Lower Mainland, including the University of British Columbia, and currently serves as faculty at Langara College and Lead Instructor at the Justice Institute of British Columbia's Centre for Conflict Resolution. Lisa volunteers in initiatives related to refugee resettlement and immigration to Canada.
