An attorney and adjunct lecturer in the Markets, Public Policy and Law Department, Lisa Terrizzi teaches Introduction to Law (LA245).

Terrizzi’s professional background includes work in both the private and nonprofit sectors. As inaugural General Counsel to a national health-focused nonprofit, Terrizzi provided strategic legal counsel to senior management, the Board of Directors and to all departments on a wide array of complex legal issues, including corporate and governance matters, clinical research and patient registries, contract, employment, and nonprofit law. She also served on an Institutional Review Board of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and on the Boston Bar Association’s Health Law Education Committee and was appointed to her city’s Health Advisory Council.

Earlier in her career, she served as a general corporate litigation and regulatory associate at two large law firms. She then transitioned into higher education administration, managing a federal wage and hour compliance project for Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and thereafter advising FAS departments and research centers in all areas of HR management; she also provided academic advising to first year students and represented FAS on two university-wide policy review committees. Additionally, as an attorney outplacement consultant and coach, Terrizzi specialized in alternative careers for attorneys and co-founded the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Lawyers in Transition Committee, where she created and delivered professional development conferences and a monthly speaker series for attorneys. She also co-chaired the Flexibility Working Group of the MIT Work-Family Council Initiative, launched by the MIT Workplace Center, which sought to identify ways to improve work/family balance for employers and employees throughout Massachusetts.

Terrizzi received a B.A. degree in history with honors and with distinction from Barnard College, Columbia University, and a J.D. from the Washington College of Law, American University, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Administrative Law Journal and received the T. Morton McDonald Award for excellence in legal research and writing. She also attended le Scuole Pie Fiorentine, an Italian scientific high school, in Florence, Italy, and studied history at King’s College, University of London. Terrizzi held a judicial clerkship with the New Hampshire Superior Court before beginning legal practice and is admitted to the State Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. An amateur classical musician, Terrizzi was a longstanding member of the Board of Directors of Greenwood Music Camp in Cummington, MA.