Lisa Witter

Lisa Witter is an American activist, consultant, speaker and author. She is a co-author of The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them (Berrett-Koehler, 2008) and is partner and Chief Change Officer of Fenton Communications, the largest public interest communications firm in the country.^[1]

Career

Lisa is the partner and Chief Change Officer of Fenton where she leads the firms work in innovation, global affairs and women. She focuses on women’s issues, communications, philanthropy, social change and politics.

She has worked for Women for Women International, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai, International Criminal Court, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, David and Lucille Packard Foundation, American Medical Association, The Polly Klaas Foundation's Amber Alert campaign, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,^[2] Stonyfield Yogurt and many others. She led an awareness and action campaign around Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s best-seller Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

She has worked on or volunteered for numerous political campaigns and is focused on elected Democratic women. She served as legislative aide for Seattle City Council Member Peter Steinbreuck.^[3]

She is an award-winning social entrepreneur and has co-founded SheSource.org, Institute for a Democratic Future and EMERGE: Women Leaders for a Democratic Future.

She is a frequent public speaker on philanthropy, communications and politics.^[4]

She is on the board of directors for Climate Counts,^[5] the national advisory board for MomsRising.org,^[6] the Op-Ed Project, Vittana.org and the communications advisory council for Women for Women International.

Writing

Along with Lisa Chen, she wrote the 2008 book The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them, which offers social change organizations key recommendations for leveraging the power of women for positive change through fundraising, advocacy and the ballot box. It garnered positive reviews from Publishers Weekly, Ode Magazine,^[7] the Chronicle of Philanthropy,^[8] and on Salon.com,^[9] BlogHer,^[10] and Feministing.^[11]

Witter's work has appeared in numerous print and online publications. She wrote an op-ed, "Unfetter Women's Intellect on Campaign Trail", for Newsday^[12] Her work appears frequently in the Huffington Post.^[13] She has also been published in AlterNet,^[14] The Seattle Times, The New York Times and on the Anderson Cooper 360 Blog.^[15]

In December 2011, she explored the concept of "cultural entrepreneurship" versus social entrepreneurship, and has published her findings in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.^[16]

Media appearances

Witter appears regularly on television and radio as a political analyst and social commentator. She has been featured on CBS, MSNBC,^[17] Fox,^[18] and on NPR.^[19]

In 2004 she was a contestant on the Showtime reality show American Candidate, hosted by Montel Williams; she came in third place.^[20]

Awards

She was honored as an outstanding activist and expert on women’s issues by Oxygen.com for her work on a national campaign against privatizating Social Security during the 2000 presidential election. She was also named a 'Rising Star' in 1997 by Washington State Democrats. In 2010, she was named one of 197 Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum.^[21]

Personal

She was born in Everett, Washington and she studied at the University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Padua (Italy), and the University of Washington. She is married to Christoph Brem, a German native, has two boys, and lives in Berlin, Germany.

References

External links

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