Liza is a writer, an educator, an erstwhile classicist, and a mother of four children. She earned her M.A. in Classics from the University of California, Los Angeles and is currently an Ed.D. candidate in Organizational Leadership. She works as a Student Success Center Manager at a health sciences career college.
Liza started writing for her formerly anonymous blog, The Anarchist Soccer Mom, in 2007. Her work has appeared in Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Time.com, USA Today, The Blue Review, Eagle Magazine, and Greenbelt Magazine. Books include 2012 Ippy Bronze medal winner Little White Dress from Mill Park Publishing, Business Professionalism, co-authored with Dr. Bruce Strom, and 2014 The Price of Silence: A Mom’s Perspective on Mental Illness from Hudson Street Press (Penguin).
Media appearances include PBS’s NOVA, The Today Show, Good Morning, America, Anderson Cooper 360, Erin Burnett OutFront, and Idaho Public Television’s Dialogue with Marcia Franklin. She has spoken to numerous organizations and gave a presentation at TEDx San Antonio in October 2013.
Parenting a child with mental illness has taught me patience, perseverance, and profound gratitude for the present tense. We have our struggles–what family doesn’t? But those challenges have forged strong bonds of love. I believe the most powerful way to fight the stigma of mental illness is to get to know and appreciate people who have it. They/we are parents, siblings, sons and daughters, colleagues, friends.