Lissa Widoff

Lissa Widoff is the former Executive Director of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation (www.switzernetwork.org), an environmental foundation based in Belfast, Maine that supports graduate Fellowships in New England and California and a Leadership Grant Program supporting NGO partnerships with Switzer Fellows to work on critical environmental issues. Lissa began as Executive Director in 1999 and oversaw the growth of the organization in its program development, governance structure engaging family and non-family trustees and financial management until 2019. Ms. Widoff has extensive experience in managing philanthropic initiatives in environmental issues and the arts. Ms. Widoff is trained as an ecologist and has worked for the State of Maine, The Nature Conservancy, the University of Maine, and co-directed the Land for Maine’s Future Program managing state acquisition of over 40,000 acres of new public lands from 1989-1992. She has served on the Boards of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and until September 2011, on the Maine Board of Environmental Protection. She holds a B.S degree from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an M.P.A from Harvard Kennedy School.