A member of the Washington, D.C. bar, Lisa’s academic background focused on environmental law, public international law, and Law of the Sea.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Legal Studies-Summa Cum Laude) from Ursuline College (USA), a Master of Laws (Public International Law/Law of the Sea) from Utrecht Universiteit (Netherlands), and a Juris Doctor (International, and Environmental Law) from Case Western Reserve University School of Law (USA). She is a graduate of the Summer Academy of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Foundation (Germany) and has studied Law of the Sea and European law in Greece through Tulane University Law School (USA).
Her doctoral dissertation, Legally Sanctioned Stakeholder Engagement in Marine Governance: A New Paradigm for Social License as a Path to Ocean Sustainability, focuses on the decisions reached about uses of the marine space and the processes utilized to reach them.
Lisa differentiates between civic stakeholders having a voice and having a say in those decisions via her novel concept of a social license to engage.
Investigating the relationship between community involvement and project acceptance, her research considers whether embedding community engagement in marine governance can reduce conflict and allow development of positive social license to operate.
Lisa is creating an operational model for participatory decision-making related to marine uses when governmental duties of care have high risk of being breached by proposed marine activities under a standard of prevention. The public trust doctrine serves as her source of legal basis for governance of the marine commons, while elements of free,prior and informed consent (FPIC) provide the standard for civic stakeholder participation.
