Speaker Details

Lisa Woll
CEO, Social Investment Forum

Lisa Woll is CEO of the Social Investment Forum (SIF). Prior to SIF, Lisa was executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation, an international organization seeking to strengthen the role of women in the news media around the world and to protect press freedom. Lisa has extensive experience in international and domestic social policy and has worked extensively around the globe on human rights issues, particularly children's human rights. She was the director of the first international study to look at the impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and directed the Washington, DC office of Save the Children, She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She is also Board President of Women's Voices for the Earth, a national environmental health organization based in Montana, and a Senior Fellow with the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) Civic Leadership program. She has written and spoken widely on human rights, human rights and development, as well as leadership.

She has also worked on a wide range of social policy issues in the United States, as executive director of Friends of Vista, as a legislative assistant in the U.S. Congress, and as a New York City Urban Fellow. Lisa is the founder of Suited for Change, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that provides professional clothing and ongoing career education to low-income women who have completed job training programs and are seeking employment. She was a founding board member and former president of the board of The Women's Alliance, a national membership organization of community organizations that increase the employability of low-income women. 

In 2001, Lisa was named a Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine in recognition of her pioneering role with Suited for Change. She has received numerous other awards and has volunteered on numerous other nonprofit boards and commissions. Lisa holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Illinois and a master's degree in public policy and women's studies from George Washington University. She spent 1990 - 1991 in Melbourne, Australia, as a Fulbright Fellow.

 

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