Lisa DiIorio joins IWC as the Women Lead Program Director.
Prior to joining Women Lead, Lisa was an educator, curriculum designer, diversity equity and belonging practitioner, with over twenty-five years of working in secondary and higher education. Along with her husband and two adventurous daughters, she has lived and worked on three continents, including in South Africa, where she worked for the African Leadership Academy, a pan-African boarding school, and in Slovakia, at Leaf Academy, both of which are innovative, entrepreneurial leadership academies devoted to empowering and inspiring change.
After several years living outside the U.S., Lisa returned to Maine, where she worked at Kents Hill School teaching, coaching, designing curriculum, and running student and adult events for its Diversity, Equity, and Belonging program.
Lisa is passionate about developing and implementing transformative, mission-aligned programs that drive positive societal change and foster community connections. A graduate of Bates College and Dartmouth College, she began working with Lewiston's immigrant community during her sophomore year of college and has been connected to organizations seeking to help New Mainers flourish ever since.
The granddaughter of an immigrant who came to the U.S. alone as a teenager with little English and lacking a formal education, Lisa treasures her last name, despite the confusion of the second upper case I, because of the story of her family's origins that it holds. Having grown up on a lake in Maine, Lisa loves water and can be found doing any number of outdoor recreational activities that involve water or trails. An avid runner, her first marathon was the Maine Marathon here in Greater Portland. When not engaged in some physical activity, she loves trying new pizza places with her family, playing MahJong with her friends, tending to her mother's garden, and watching her beloved Boston Celtics.