Lisette joined ACRC in 2020 after serving on the board of directors as the Public Policy Committee Chair for several years. In addition to leading ACRC’s advocacy efforts, Lisette builds coalitions and strategic partnerships and she utilizes her experience and skills to provide expert-level guidance, policy analysis, practice support, facilitation, strategic planning, and consultation services to ACRC’s membership and non-member systems, agencies, and associations.
Previously, Lisette was the Vice President of National Advocacy and Public Policy for the national nonprofit Boys Town, where she advocated for effective federal and state policies related to child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and health. Lisette’s foundational experiences are in direct care, and she joined Boys Town DC in 2007 as a Family Teacher caring for girls in foster care and boys committed to the juvenile justice system in a family-style, community-based, therapeutic residential program.
Prior to Boys Town, Lisette worked with children and families in a variety of capacities, including as a coordinator of a prevention-focused, after-school program in Detroit; as a counselor/teacher and then a program director at a residential program in North Carolina; and she worked as a community organizer and grant manager focused on quality early childhood education, school readiness, and parental involvement in schools.
Lisette serves on several national policy committees, coalitions, and working groups including as a mayoral appointee to the Washington DC Juvenile Justice Advisory Group, co-chair of the Act4JJ Coalition, co-chair of the national Child and Family Services Liability Insurance Working Group, a former appointee to the American Bar Association Commission on Youth and Family Justice, and an Associate Editor for the international Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma. Lisette regularly facilitates conversations and shares policy and practice insight and expertise with local, state, national, and international audiences.
Lisette received her B.S. in Science from the Eberly College of Science at Penn State University. She earned her J.D. at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, where she was a Leadership Scholar and Schweitzer Fellow, a pro bono law clerk representing children with special needs, a student attorney at the National Association of the Deaf, and a legislative intern with the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.