After growing up in Sacramento, California, and graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a major in Women’s Studies and a minor in psychology, Lisa spent 20 years living in rural and remote places. She became a Community Health Practitioner and started a family in a remote community of Alaska. In 2010, she moved to Anchorage to attend MEDEX Northwest, and graduated as a physician assistant in 2012.

While working at Southcentral Foundation’s Fireweed Clinic (Outpatient Community Mental Health) from 2013-2018, she also provided weekly psychiatric care at Dena A Coy’s residential treatment facility for women with co-occurring disorders, and traveled quarterly to Dillingham to provide psychiatric services there. In 2014, she obtained her Certificate of Added Qualifications (CAQ) in Psychiatry.

In 2018, she transferred positions at SCF and began traveling to remote villages on an intermittent basis to provide rural primary care. Just prior to COVID, she decided to return to psychiatry, and started working part-time at Greatland Clinical Associates.

She continues to build on her education and training in mental health. In 2023 Lisa completed requirements for certification in Perinatal Mental Health; she also completed TBT-S Level III (Temperament Based Therapy with Support for Anorexia Nervosa) to expand her ability to care for people with eating disorders.

Lisa provides psychotherapy appropriate to the visit, and values team-based care; she will consult with and refer to other providers and therapists when appropriate, including occupational and medical nutrition therapy. She recognizes that careful diagnosis, and the right treatment, (medication or otherwise) for the right problem at the right time, can be life-altering, and works collaboratively with patients to achieve wellness using a variety of appropriate tools.

Lisa enjoys facilitating recovery from trauma, substance abuse, and eating disorders. She recognizes that disconnection is the source of many problems, and strives to help people reconnect with and better understand and appreciate their body’s unique rhythms. This includes working with people around difficulties with sleep and body image. She works with clients to improve their sense of connection on a broader level as well, in a world experiencing rapid changes. She is aware of the unique mental health challenges associated with the rural-urban transition, including both practical and cultural aspects of this.

Because Alaska’s wide geographic spread over one time zone affects the sleep and mental health of most of the population, she is an advocate of both starting schools later and ending Daylight Saving Time in the interest of public health; her commentaries on these topics have appeared in ADN.