Lisa Falls is an artist and is a Registered, Board Certified Art Therapist with the Art Therapy Credentials Board. She has worked in the field of art therapy for 20 years, 18 years in San Diego. She has presented and taught both locally and nationally. She was the Program Coordinator and instructor for the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) Extension Specialized Certificate in Therapeutic Uses of Art for eight years. Lisa continues to teach courses about how art therapy is used to benefit different populations. She will be teaching a course on Art Therapy and Bipolar Disorder in 2014. Lisa mentors students in the Masters of Arts in Counseling program at Prescott College in Prescott Arizona. She facilitates an Art Therapy Cancer Patient Survivor support group through Sharp HealthCare’s Arts for Healing Program. She provides group and individual supervision for trainees working toward their Art Therapy registration.
Lisa has also worked in hospices, residential treatment facilities, in-patient, out-patient facilities and Alzheimer’s and memory care facilities. Lisa is a former member of the Board of Directors of the San Diego Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Survivors of Suicide Loss. Through Survivors of Suicide Loss, she ran support groups for eight years for family members and friends who had lost a loved one to suicide and continues the work of both suicide prevention and dealing with the aftermath of suicide in her private practice.
She was a team member on six trips to Louisiana to assist residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and was the lead trainer to facilitate on-going therapeutic art services for that population. Lisa is past President of the San Diego Art Therapy Association. She was the Local Arrangements Chair in 2004 and Special Sessions Chair for the American Art Therapy Association’s National Conferences in 2006 and 2007.
Lisa received her Bachelor of Arts from UC Berkeley, her Master of Fine Arts degree from Brooklyn College, and her Master of Professional Studies in Art Therapy and Creativity Development from Pratt University in New York.