Lisa Karlisch

Dr. Lisa Karlisch is founder and principal of Sparkfire Strategy, a strategic consulting firm focused on serving corporations, foundations and non-profit institutions in the health care, social services, and education sectors. She has worked with hundreds of organizations to develop the vision for their organization or functional area and chart the path to achieve that vision. She also works extensively with senior executives and management teams to develop leadership skills, build effective teams and design high performing organizations.

Lisa has a broad base of both operational and consulting experience in both non-profit and commercial organizations. Lisa’s consulting experience began at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, where she facilitated the strategies of numerous Fortune 500 organizations. Lisa was Chief Administrative Officer for Buchanan & Edwards, a government IT consulting firm, where she oversaw and strengthened all of the back-office functions of the organization. There she implemented quality control programs like ISO 9000 and CMMI. She also served as Chief Operating Officer at the Center for Multicultural Human Services, a community mental health organization dedicated to serving the needs of immigrants and refugees. Lisa received her Ph.D. in Clinical Child Psychology from Duke University. She also has a B.S. from Virginia Tech in Psychology and Sociology.

She played volleyball at Virginia Tech where she was the second female athlete to have her jersey retired. In addition to serving on the Virginia Tech Alumni Board, she also serves on the Fralin Biomedical Research Institution Advisory Board, the Virginia Tech Athletic Fund Board and the Virginia Tech Campaign Steering Committee.