Lisa Witter

Lisa Witter is the founder and Chief Optimist of W I T T E R ventures, a lab, incubator and consultancy focused on social change solutions with an emphasis on communications, advocacy and behavior change. Lisa and her team specialize in the areas of and intersections between women, children, health, sports, philanthropy, technology, economic empowerment, corporate social responsibility and violence prevention. Currently she is also serving as part-time Executive Director of WithoutViolence – a communications and advocacy capacity building initiative focused on accelerating the impact of those working to reduce violence in the lives of boys and girls.

Lisa is an award-winning social/political entrepreneur, executive and architect and maker of change. She has advised countless CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, top politicians, philanthropists, scientists and academics.

She is a frequent public speaker and moderator appearing on such media outlets and platforms as NPR, MSNBC, CBS, World Economic Forum, TEDWomen and The Skoll World Forum and has been published in publications including Fast Company, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Newsday and The Seattle Times. In 2004 Witter was a contestant on the Showtime reality show, “American Candidate.”

Formerly of Fenton (now serving as Special Advisor) she worked with such clients as The Elders, Atlantic Philanthropies, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai, International Criminal Court, The Hewlett Foundation, National Geographic, American Medical Association, The Packard Foundation and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Lisa served as an expert panelist for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Institute of Medicine on violence prevention and co-led the Clinton Global Initiative’s Action Network on Women and Girls. She is co-author of The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them. She is a co-founder of the award-winning SheSource.org and was honored as an outstanding activist by Oxygen.com in 2000. In 2010 she was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and serves on WEF's Global Agenda Council for Neuroscience and Behavior.

Lisa is on numerous advisory/boards including Maxwell Health, Pop!Tech, the Women's Philanthropy Institute, Stonyfield Farms, Girls 20 Summit and the Op-Ed Project. She studied at the UC Santa Cruz, the University of Washington, the Universita di Padua and the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education.

Her passions are hanging with her two little dudes playing sports - adventuring in nature and doing the robot dance, skiing and snowboarding with her hubby, being an autodidact, dorking out about politics, late night movies alone, wearing pretty dresses, losing herself in music and feeling deeply connected (sometimes with red wine) to wherever and whomever she is with.

Follow Lisa on Twitter @lisamwitter.