I helped recruit Lisa to the Milwaukee Journal, which merged with the Milwaukee Sentinel about a year after her arrival. Both she and I remained on the editorial board of the merged newspaper.

I knew her as a wonderful person and a conscientious worker. The letters were well edited. She impressively re-designed the op-ed page, making it more attractive and reader-friendly. She was reticent at first at editorial board meetings, doubtless because of her young age. But she gradually warmed to the sessions and made valuable contributions to our discussions of the issues of the day.

I had the pleasure of working with Lisa as a fellow member of the Rae’s Hope Board of Directors. Lisa has every quality one would want in a board member. She is very giving of her time, selfless, extremely reliable, and has the most wonderful attitude. I always felt that I could go to her with an ask or a problem to solve, and even if she didn’t know how to go about resolving the issue right away, she took the time to figure out how to resolve the issue. She is also extremely organized and self-motivated. Almost immediately upon joining the organization, Lisa voluntarily signed up for the Secretary position, a position that can be very time-intensive. Needless to say, she was absolutely stellar in that role. She took it upon herself to organize Rae’s Hope’s internal documents so that future board members would be able to access the documents easily. Nobody asked her to do it, but she saw that organizing and streamlining those documents would help the organization move forward, and her instincts were absolutely correct. Lisa was “all in” the moment she joined Rae’s Hope. Although she had to step down from the board for personal reasons, she will always have a place with the organization and she has undoubtedly left a void on our board that will be hard to fill. I cannot recommend Lisa MacKay enough and I hope to work with her again in the future.