Lisa completed her PhD in art history at UC Berkeley with a specialization in the Italian Renaissance. She has been a lecturer at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, as well as several other Bay Area institutions, and is on the faculty for study abroad programs in Florence and Vienna. She has taught numerous surveys of western and early modern art, as well as specialized classes on topics including art and politics, representations of war, gender and sexuality, the history of museums, and a range of Renaissance subjects. She also has a lifelong personal interest in Jewish history and Holocaust studies.