From Trinidad and Tobago to Colombia and back home, Lisa Morrow finds inspiration in collaboration with women

Whether leading her team at Rogers or helping amplify the work of women in countries from Trinidad and Tobago to Colombia, Lisa Morrow’s focus is on elevating others.

In the past year, Lisa, operations manager for Lincoln Center Adult Outpatient programs, has traveled far and wide, and she’s bringing her takeaways back home.

Most recently in the fall, Lisa traveled to Colombia for a little more than a week, where she and other volunteers shared their knowledge to bolster local women’s work with nonprofits. Through the same program with Women’s Alliance for Knowledge Exchange, or WAKE, Lisa also traveled to Trinidad and Tobago last March.

“The overarching goal is to pair professional women with women-led nonprofits across the world who just need amplification for their organization,” Lisa says. “To varying degrees, the experience of women all over the world is quite similar. We may not have had loved ones forcibly disappeared like in Colombia, and we may not be fighting fires in the woods in Trinidad, but the experience of being a woman is so similar across the world, and we have found it so extremely easy to connect.”

The nonprofit WAKE, according to its website, is “dedicated to empowering mission-driven social enterprises around the globe by leveraging technology, volunteerism, and collaboration.”

Through WAKE’s program, women in leadership positions can apply to be an advisor, who then fundraise to ensure local participants in countries such as Trinidad and Tobago or Colombia don’t have to pay for the programming. Lisa says she’s grateful to Rogers team members for their donations and support.

“They have been extremely supportive of this work,” Lisa says. “That support looks like being able to have open conversations about why this work is important and why I would love to be able to participate, in addition to what these programs help me learn that I then bring back to my leadership role at Rogers as a woman part of a majority women-led team.”

As part of the program, advisors spend about nine days in another country working with an assigned local nonprofit to help with anything from a marketing pitch to website design. The final day is devoted to meeting with students.

“We’re collaborating,” Lisa says. “It’s a lot of stuff in just over a week, but it’s awesome. The way everyone connects in a room without competition and without one-upping and truly works together is probably my biggest take away — just completely problem-solving and talking about their experiences with no egos involved.”

As part of her travels, Lisa worked with an organization in Colombia called Princesas Menstruantes, which provides menstrual education and demystification. She also conducted a workshop on problem-solving in the professional environment. She says on both of her trips, participants, students, and other advisors approached her wanting to know more about what it’s like working in the mental health field.

“Because both in Colombia and Trinidad – and even here—mental health is stigmatized,” she says. “One student in Trinidad approached me, and I connected her with two of our clinical supervisors because she wanted to go into school for psychiatry and didn’t know what route to take, because it was not really talked about in Trinidad.”

She says her experiences abroad highlighted mental health approaches for her, too, including Madres de la Candelaria, a support organization for women who had relatives who disappeared due to decades-long violence that took Lisa and other advisors to the Museum of Memory commemorating victims.

“It’s people brought together addressing their trauma,” Lisa says. “The way mental health looks all over the world, whether it’s talked about or not — the second people see you are in that industry, they want to talk to you about it, which is fascinating. Every conversation helps break the stigma.”

Lisa says she’s carrying back lessons learned to her work at Rogers.

“You can see that in the way I lead and interact with my team,” Lisa says. “That involves listening more than you talk, as well as always considering everyone’s personal and individual experience and how their day has been. Being a good leader means taking all that into consideration with every conversation you have and every decision that you make.”

Lisa’s traveling will continue. As part of WAKE’s program, next she will head to Cambodia and Rwanda as a part-volunteer part-staff member.

“It’s a unique program, but it shouldn’t be. It’s an honor to be part of it, it’s an honor to have been accepted, and it’s an honor to have been asked back again,” Lisa says. “Even if it seems out of your reach, give it a shot.”

Lisa says she’s happy to talk with anyone interested in learning more about the program and applying to be an advisor. You can reach out to her via email at lisa.morrow@rogersbh.org.