Lisa Bedell has worked in public relations, marketing, event planning, and donor development for both for-profit companies and non-profit organizations for over 20 years.

Her varied career began in media, first as a college intern with CNN Medical News in Atlanta and directly post-college as a page at NBC in New York. From there, she made her way into the NBC Network newsroom, working with assignment editors to field calls from producers and correspondents on assignment around the world and to monitor news feeds in preparation for the morning network news show line-up, including Sunrise News and The Today Show. She later worked for NBC Network News Archives, researching and providing videotape and archived newsreel footage to producers and correspondents in the network news division.

Her parlay into public relations was unplanned, yet fortuitous. After leaving NBC News in New York, she spent a year travelling the world, with a short hiatus in Seoul, Korea to work with NBC Sports on their coverage of the 1988 Olympics. Upon her return, she worked in public relations & marketing at CNN in Atlanta, her hometown. These were the days when CNN was still vying for contention as the public’s preferred news source of choice. The young network was becoming a fiercely competitive rival to the “Big Three” (ABC, NBC, CBS) through its ‘round the clock’ coverage of events like Poland’s Solidarity movement, the Challenger shuttle disaster, China’s Tiananmen Square uprising, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. CNN was a daily staple for most government leaders and even became a go-between in some cases of diplomacy. (She recalls a time when Benjamin Netanyahu, at that time Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, came to speak to the news staff about responsible coverage of the political conflict in the Middle East). Her job was to get CNN’s name in the newspaper by citing when they were the first with breaking news, before the “Big Three.” She also edited video montages of CNN’s best breaking news coverage, which garnered prestigious media awards, including an Alfred I. Dupont Award, for its coverage of the San Francisco earthquake in 1989, among others.

After marriage, she and her husband Alan moved to Richmond, VA to raise their budding family.
She kept herself busy outside the home through volunteer work with the Junior League of Richmond (JLR) and through her children’s schools. As the VP of Communications for the JLR, she spearheaded a rebranding campaign for the affiliate as well as for their new community outreach program, Wonders on Wheels. She also co-chaired the Logistics Committee for INSPIRE, a bi-annual event designed to promote the arts at St. Catherine’s and St. Christopher’s Schools in Richmond. The event shined a spotlight on student works in the fine arts, music, dance, theater, as well as hands-on art projects incorporating the STEM curriculum.

In 2005, Lisa co-founded Sophisticated Soirees, a full-service event management company where she was responsible for new business development, budget management, design and concept planning, and all service provider coordination for corporate events, PR functions, private parties, and weddings. The firm’s most notable event included the “Remembering the Miller & Rhoads Tea Room” luncheon & fashion show, hosted by the Library of Virginia Foundation in 2006.

Lisa transitioned into the non-profit world when she was recruited by Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity (RMHFH) in 2007 to lead the affiliate’s marketing, public relations and event planning campaigns. While there, she was able to exponentially increase public exposure for the non-profit through free publicity and story positioning, cultivating new community development partners to help sustain the mission, while keeping marketing costs to a minimum. She was proud to be part of a small creative team that worked together to transform the affiliate into a high-profile non-profit through a customer-centric expansion of products and services. Under the directions of forward-thinking leadership, the team was able to attain multi-million-dollar asset growth in a down market and move the non-profit into the Top 20 position in a network of 1,500 national affiliates. In her later role as Education & Youth Development Coordinator, she trained students to serve as advocates for affordable housing and as youth ambassadors for RMHFH in order to build community relations and increase volunteer and donor support for the affiliate. During her tenure in this position, she established the RMHFH Junior Board of Directors, comprised of local University-based chapters and high school clubs, that worked together to engage students in the mission through education and advocacy, fundraising and community service.

Having grown up in a family of musicians, dancers and art appreciators, it was inevitable that Lisa too would develop a passion for all forms of art. Her work with the Next Star Arts program is the perfect intersection of her interests in youth leadership development and the arts, and she is thrilled to be a part of the team’s new vision to cultivate an appreciation of diverse cultures through exposure to the arts worldwide.

Lisa is married to Alan and they have 3 grown children – Colby, Wilson and Mallory. An avid reader and conservationist, she is currently living in Ridgeland, South Carolina where she is currently working as an Innkeeper at the historic Rhett House Inn in Beaufort, SC. When not tending to guests at the Inn, she enjoys boating, biking, tending to her garden, and taking long walks with her dog Banks.