My "Resume"
You’re reading this because you’re wondering if I’m qualified for this job as County Commissioner. I could hand you a boring CV with all my jobs, and you would look at it and cock your head. You’d probably even shake your head and say, “What a weird career path!” And you would be right just looking at the surface of it. You probably wouldn’t see why this “weird career path” qualifies me to even consider running for County Commissioner.
So I would like to tell you about who am, my path to where we are today, and why I’m confident I can serve you…with a bit of narration.
Communication is part of the fabric of my being. I won’t be offended if you skip parts!
Also, I am not Lisa Moretti, the professional wrestler, although we grew up a stone’s throw from each other. We’ve never met, but we frequently get each other’s emails. Just wanted to get that out of the way, lol.
I've have a career based on leadership, problem-solving, strategic thinking, advocating for the underdog, communication, transparency, and respect. Give me a minute -- you'll see why.
Marine Corp Brat
My father served in Vietnam after graduating from ROTC in Alhambra, California. During his tours of duty, we were stationed in Kaneohe, HI, and Beaufort, SC. I am proud of my father’s service but saddened by the lack of recognition we had at the time for what we now call PTSD. My father struggled with the aftermath of being on the front lines of war.
Veterans and their health is something I care deeply about. I do know that a “battle buddy” can be an important re-entry back into our communities. I have been a supporter of TADSAW (Train a Dog, Save a Warrior), which matches veterans with shelter pets and pays for their training as a service animal/former warrior team. The program is underfunded but highly effective. I donate as often as I can.
1st Class Girl Scout
Scouting has been a long tradition in my family. My grandfather built the Scout House in Torrance, California and my mom, her best friend Pat, and my grandparents helped open up Philmont Ranch, the Boy Scout camp used for Jamboree. I proudly still wear my mom’s Philmont sweatshirt.
As for my role in scouting. I was a top cookie seller in my troop and city as a I pounded the pavement door-to-door. I am a proud First-Class Girl Scout. As a Senior Girl Scout, I also competed in and became a Mojave Survival Camp counselor. I am trained in survival camping both in a city and in the harsh Mojave Desert environments. I may be a little rusty on my lashing knots, but I’ve recently brushed off my knots guide for fun. If there’s an emergency, I’ve got some skills!
Dance and Drill Competitor and Team Captain
Starting in 7th grade, I began competing in national drill and dance team competitions. I was selected to be the student representative with our parent support group for my 7th and 8th grade team. At my high school, freshmen were not usually allowed on the team. My fellow competitors moving on to Redondo Union High School and I lobbied for and won the right to try out. We made the team!
I have marched miles upon miles in parades, competed in national competitions, my military team was 2nd in the nation, and as my team's Captain, my lLeutenants and I did drill training with the ROTC team at USC. I also competed individually in national competitions, taught summer drill camps, and even became one of the youngest judges at national drill and dance competitions. Competing with and leading a team gave me early leadership training and some basic teaching skills that I still use today. It also taught me discipline.
Miss America Pageant System Competitor
As I started to age out of competing on dance and military drill teams, I entered the Miss Torrance Pageant to win some scholarship money for UCLA. My goal was to be first runner-up. I won! Over the course of the year, I did more than 300 speaking engagements in my community. At the Miss California Pageant (at age 17), I won first place on every interview ballot, which had never happened in the history of the pageant. A scholarship was created by the Contestants' Traveling Companions in my name for anyone who might do that again.
For the next 5 years, I trained other competitors in how to do well in the interview portion of the competition. My technique taught people how to relate to current events. After 5 years and much prodding from the local pageant franchisees, I competed for Miss Los Angeles County. Again, my aim was first runner-up. I won!
I worked actively with new franchisees for The Miss California Pageant as a competitor spokesperson. Sadly, internal politicking interfered with the competition. However, after the pageant, due to some of the things I pointed out, changes were made that improved the Miss California Pageant.
UCLA Campus Events Speaker's Program
When I started at UCLA, I interviewed for and landed a student job with UCLA Campus Events. I worked in the Speaker’s Program, bringing world-famous writers, thinkers, and celebrities to campus for a 45-minute question-and-answer session with the student body. I worked with everyone from Bill Murray to Dominique LaPierre to Hunter S. Thompson to Michael Keaton to William F. Buckley, Jr. to Jerry Lewis to Clint Eastwood to Matt Groenig to….it’s a long list.
Under our umbrella at Campus Events were also Concerts and Films along with Publicity. I helped with concerts by Tom Petty, The Alarm, Jesus and Mary Chain, Los Lobos, Suzanne Vega, The Bonedaddys, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and many more. We also helped premiere many films because we were in close proximity to most of the major film studios.
And I learned about PR first hand helping my fellow students in that department. Eventually, I became the head of The Speaker’s Program and trained many underclassmen/women. Many of my friends from Campus Events have gone on to become producers, directors, writers, studio executives, and entertainment industry executives.
UCLA Graduate
Along with Campus Events and the pageant system, I was also a full-time student. My early schooling made me passionate about learning (that would serve me well years later in Pasco County!) I explored pre-law classes, dissected bodies in Kinesiology classes, audited acupuncture, kept up with my personal passion for natural health, read the classics, and turned philosophical statements into math proofs…until they finally said, “You need to declare a major.” I had the most units in Sociology and Psychology classes. I enjoyed learning about group dynamics and social group conflicts. As odd as my arrival at my major and specialization were, I’ve found they have served me well in my career. I’m proud to say I was able to work while going to school and graduated with no student debt.
DOVE Films
After I graduated from college, I answered an ad in the LA Times for a production company. Out of 1200 applicants, I was chosen. Dove Films made commercials for some of the biggest companies in the world, and we were home to some of the most famous directors. I had the joy of working with Billy Wilder, Vilmos Zsigmond, Haskell Wexler, and others. It was not uncommon to tell my boss, Cal Bernstein, “Hey Cal, Carl Reiner is on the phone.” This was my first job in the film industry, and I started at the bottom of the bottom of the pecking order in the office – coffee girl, gopher, and receptionist. Eventually, I would become Executive Producer at the largest film production house in Northern California, outside of San Francisco, and spend more than 25 years as a producer in the film and television industry.
The Getty Museum
I took a little detour before I got into the meat of my production career. Production is exhausting and I still had some philosophical searching tugging at my heart. I got a job at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu…as a security guard. I was one of the first women allowed on dayshift at the museum. The Getty is pretty safe, so while standing guard I got to learn from all the experts in the art world about our collection and more. I would spend hours after my shift learning and studying the great artists of the world, from antiquities to illuminated books, through all the eras of painting, decorative arts, and photography.
I was also trained for mass casualty events and emergency response. Because of The Getty's location, it is an evacuation and rescue point for the surrounding area. We always had resources to care for over 1,000 people for more than 5 days. I was trained in fire suppression, triage, first aid, and even firearms.
Eventually, I was recruited into the Registrar’s Office and helped track our art on loan around the world. But I didn’t forget my security team. I saw some disappointing treatment of very good people by higher-ups. I took a stand on their behalf. I marched into the head curator’s office and asked for a meeting. I spoke with him about what I saw and why it was incongruent. Admittedly, I was young and wanted changes to happen quickly, but that’s not how big corporations work. I found I couldn’t continue to work at the museum knowing what I knew. However, even though that was the end of a really great job, I have never regretted standing up for the least acknowledged.
SunAmerica Marketing
After working at The Getty, I quickly landed at SunAmerica, the annuity company, in their marketing services division. SunAmerica was in the process of acquiring 25 smaller companies that all had different types of databases. While holding down my department’s marketing services work, I also was assisting with customer service. The consolidation process was rocky (we were cutting edge with these things called CD-ROMs), but this was people’s retirement monies. While many people in the company thought, “That case is just a number,” a small group of us knew it was more than that - it was people's hard-earned money that they needed. We worked long nights to find people’s paper records and then, during the day, worked with the developers building the software that would run the business to create programs that would retrieve information our customers needed and deserved.
During my daytime regular job responsibilities, I came up with and built a support communications program for our corporate brokers that they loved with the latest news stories, regulatory changes, and more with a daily executive summary. I believe information should be easy to access, easy to understand, and useful.
I came to appreciate the concept of “completed staff work.” It has been one of the standards I set for myself and my teams throughout my career.
The California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs/The Partnership for a Drug-Free America
After SunAmerica, I met the gentleman who would become “The Drug Czar” for our Governor. He recruited me to help him with a program that combined television advertising and drug/alcohol prevention being launched by The Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) to unsell drugs and alcohol which came to be called social marketing. After having worked in downtown LA, I knew how devastating drug and alcohol addiction can be. I’d rather work to catch bodies upstream than try to put them back together downstream.
I was hired as a contractor for the State of California and launched one of the first state alliance programs of PDFA called The Partnership for a Drug-Free California (PDFC). The other program off the line with me was Florida! During my time at PDFC, I worked to create cross-agency efforts that coordinated with the media (instead of at them) for public service announcements. I focused on Red Ribbon Week. I was able to create the highest levels of public service advertising donations (my record stood for years) to support kids. It took a lot of meetings, memos, handshakes, and smiles to get there, but we created a successful program together. No one had to do anything big; each agency just implemented something easily within its scope of services. We also worked with the media to allow them to be a partner at the table and provide them with resources that worked for them. That meant asking and learning how they function too.
We also coordinated support for teens with a program called Friday Night Live, an alternative to gang involvement. Together, working with the media, we were able to drop drunk driving deaths in one of our counties with the highest teen crashes and deaths from 25 to 0, which lasted for 18 months.
Because of my work with both grassroots groups and state agencies, I was tapped to facilitate meetings for information gathering and ultimately ended up crafting the language for the state’s policy on how prevention money would be used from the Federal Block Grant after a Medicare carve out. I wrote quite a bit of policy language for the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, as well as did some speechwriting for the Governor on prevention topics. I also learned how money moves in federal, state, and municipal agencies.
In my “spare” time, I was working with local community advocates in Sacramento. We had some serious problems, and dysfunctional agency coordination was a big factor. We were also featured poorly in an episode of COPS that literally stepped and tripped over great community work to film terrible problems. I was the liaison between the media, law enforcement, and the community. During that time, I also learned a huge lesson about the power of young voices. Long story short: when young people speak up, things change!
Freelance Producer (TV, Radio, Billboard, Web, CD/DVD)
Concurrently with working at PDFC and many of the following jobs, I was also a freelance television producer. I worked with a 35mm film crew (fancy!) producing commercials for Amtrack, a grocery chain similar to Publix, Orchard Hardware, Harvey’s Casino, Fisher-Price Toys, and others. I also worked with a video crew on longer-format projects.
People often ask me what a producer does. The answer is it depends on who the producer is. I was very hands-on. I was in the field with my crew at 4 am, the last one through the lunch line and the last one out the door. It’s a form of completed staff work. I also operate from the notion that I should never ask someone to do something I'm not willing to do myself.
I worked on projects from the bidding process to storyboards to preproduction through production, to the film transfer, and then to completion of post-production. I’ve directed audio sessions, worked with jingle writers, and compiled all the moving parts needed to create a commercial.
Producing requires a lot of coordination, making sure everyone has what they need to do their job, keeping budgets reined in, creating a workplace environment that brings out the best in people, and having 4 solutions in your head for any possible problem before it arises. My mom liked to say that I got paid to worry. It’s intense work but a lot of fun if you do it right. The old Girl Scout motto of Be Prepared was good training.
Lockheed Martin Statewide Automated Child Support Project
I was asked to come in and help coordinate a documentation program for a contract with the State of California. Lockheed Martin needed some help coordinating 5 contracting teams for the Statewide Automated Child Support System. This was an ambitious program to electronically ensure kids were getting the child support they were legally entitled to, even if a non-paying parent was in another state. The support documentation ended up being 47 five-inch binders…it was a big project.
Lockheed’s project manager began having difficulty with their Q/A contractor, Booz-Allen, and the State because technology was outpacing the contract’s scope of work. I was brought in by the top management team from Lockheed to help with the negotiations team to break the deadlock on progress. Eventually, we were successful at finding a good compromise, but shortly thereafter, the change of state leadership ended the project.
The State of California Technical Assistance Pool
After some budget cuts with the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, it was time to move into something new. I had intended to be in Sacramento working with state government for a year or two (can you hear God chuckling?) One of my friends was taking maternity leave, and she needed someone who knew the state’s drug and alcohol treatment and prevention experts, community activists, and programs. I stepped in to administer the Technical Assistance pool. In short, the State of California funded a contract with a pool of money and charged us with helping grassroots programs get the consultant assistance they needed from the best of the best, and we paid them from the pool.
My partner and I started noticing that up and down the state, we were seeing similar requests. So we created The Prevention Extension, commissioned 20 curricula, and held large-scale, multitrack trainings around the state. This not only provided much-needed training but also fostered a networking system that helped create better community safety nets. It was also a better use of funds. Years later, this idea of empowering people and assisting them became part of the Listening Tour concept of The Pasco Communities Network.
Because our firm did program evaluation, I saw how easy it was to miss the point of the job. I am adamant about evaluating how programs work, especially when using tax dollars. Doing the program is one thing; whether it meets objectives is the actual mark of success. I even helped develop a training curriculum for grassroots groups called “Evaluation Without a Budget.”
The Sacramento Air Quality Management District
Another budget change…I landed at the Air Quality Management District in the Spare The Air Program. I worked as a Public Information Officer. Sacramento sits in a bowl-shaped topography and frequently has air quality issues because it’s also a major trucking throughway. I was the Spare The Air voice on our local hotline frequently and worked with the various industries that fell under our regulatory jurisdiction, communicating guidelines about the latest changes…in non-government speak.
During the winter months, our air quality would improve, but our rivers would overflow. Our Spare The Air Team would become the media liaisons and spokespeople regarding levee issues, evacuation, emergency response, and rescue. Some of the most devastating flooding in Sacramento occurred during my watch. All of my emergency training, survival camping, and communications skills dovetailed.
More Television Production
The big production house I freelanced for had a problem client and they needed someone who could manage them. Our Spare The Air Team was taking some cuts; I changed positions so the team could stay together. I was recruited to take over the management of a $5 million account and that difficult client. Working with the client and the production house's upper management, I was able to meet the contract objectives, satisfy the creative desires of the client, and come in under budget. Shortly after, an internal agency was formed at the production facility and I decided to move over full-time as their lead producer.
Eventually, my director and I grew our team to five top-notch producers whom I trained. We developed a system of project management that meant anyone could pick up a job and effortlessly continue. I call this the beer-truck method. Little did I know I would actually need it to work so perfectly. Basically, if, as the producer of a job, I got hit by a beer truck, anyone else should be able to grab my project folder and continue with no interruption for the director or client. When you’re producing multi-million dollar jobs with 50 freelance crew members, 40 cast members, and lots of contractors, every second is MONEY, and your job has to go without a hitch. At one point, I was hit by a car as a pedestrian the day before a job was to begin, so we really did test out the beer truck method!
As this thing called “the web” started to happen, my director and I found that the big production company was struggling to meet clients’ demands and do what they had always done (including producing The Lottery weekly TV show, PBS cooking shows with Lidia, Don't Sweat The Small Stuff, etc.)
But we knew this new medium was where we wanted to be. We amicably left the production house and started our own boutique agency. We became the number one contractor for state agencies like The Air Resources Board, Juvenile Justice, Health and Human Services, and the Attorney General’s Office. Our work for the AG became our flagship, and we won awards left and right for our work together with them. I worked with police departments throughout the state, created projects to reduce children’s exposure to violence, support community policing, found ways to create safe schools, prevent elder abuse, reduce methamphetamine use, and lower drunk-driving rates. We maximized outreach with web-based information that coordinated with media campaigns (radio, print, outdoor, TV) as well as those newfangled DVD things. We also worked with our local accounts, including developers revitalizing downtown Sacramento, local chains, franchises, and other business clients.
Writer and Natural Health Care Advocate for People and Pets
I love TV production, but as Executive Producer, it’s a 24/7, 313-day-a-year job. I was ready for a change and eventually moved into the pet industry. I wrote regularly for independent pet store retailers and my writing was featured in Bowtie Publications (all the “Fancy”s – dog, cat, bird) and Redstone Publications. I became a local expert on feeding raw food for dogs and cats. I spoke at the pet industry’s national trade show, Super Zoo, about how to feed raw food.
I also help a few companies launch their lines and created marketing materials and branding for several of them.
I was also still active in the Natural Products industry which had been an interest since my first job at Great Earth Vitamins. I was recruited to become the staff writer for a magazine dedicated to natural health and nutritional supplements. Every month, I produced more than three quarters of the magazine's content, often acting as a ghostwriter for physicians.
I wrote a feature on a fitness expert, and she began to hire me to write for her. She was based in Safety Harbor, Florida. She introduced me to my husband, and I became her full-time writer and traveling companion. I produced two PBS shows for her as well. When she died of breast cancer, I was devastated. By then, my husband and I had moved into East Pasco, attracted by the protections of the East Pasco Overlay. We built our home ourselves and pride ourselves on having been thoughtful in how we constructed our home, worked with the wildlife, and implemented passive solar in our design.
I continue to be a well-regarded writer in the natural products field and still work creating educational pieces and social media communications for the company I’ve worked with for the past 3 years. My “boss” and I have known each other since we were 12.
Pasco County Community Advocate
One day, a piece of plywood appeared, leaning up on a fence on Lake Iola Road. “RV Park to go here, Meeting at Lake Jovita” in spray paint with a date. My husband and I showed up, along with 100+ other people. The community didn’t want this. The land was sold to the developer by the Commissioner’s sister. It was smack dab in the middle of the rural area – 750 Provost RVs on 100 acres as RV-Condo Spaces with a splash pad, concerts, restaurants, cottages, and more. Completely incongruent with the rural area.
After that meeting, I began to connect with some of the original people from the community who helped develop the NE Rural Plan. I learned about “The Comp Plan” and the Land Use Code. I began to study them. I started asking a lot of questions. The RV Park developer tried to get my support with landscaping for my property so I would just shut up. I have no interest in selling out my community for shrubbery.
I also attended some meetings with the Planning Department. I noted that they were WAY out of compliance with the deadline to set the commercial rules for the overlay (it was being used repeatedly as a loophole). I also mentioned that we residents were considering a lawsuit.
I testified at the Planning Commission Hearing and both BOCC hearings. An upshot of this project is that the county attorney told me the project was neither commercial nor residential. There is no definition of what an “RV-Condo” space is, and the county is not able to give us one.
We were able to get the number of spaces lowered, but if this is “ownership” in an area where the zoning is 1 dwelling unit (du)/5 acres, this project is far out of bounds. Through this process, I also realized how few rights we have in how our community is developed and how little regard our representatives have for us. I was stunned when the developer's attorney announced she was writing the new Comprehensive Plan guidelines for this not-residential-not-commercial enterprise.
In the meantime, development across Pasco County began to really ratchet up. Deals made years before were starting to materialize. Every BOCC meeting was an arm’s length list of development projects, and none were being denied. I've called it death by a thousand papercuts. It would be a full-time job to attend the hearings.
I began talking to planning experts. I learned about the Urban Land Institute, to which we’ve paid millions of taxpayer dollars, the PEDC, Penny for Pasco, Elamp/Elasc, the county biologist, and waterkeepers in other counties. I also read more about what makes for good planning, dove into the Comprehensive Plan, and worked my way through the Land Use Code and Florida Statutes. There was a lot of coffee involved!
I have frequently been asked for comment after various public hearings and with the election fraud complaints I’ve filed. Consequently, people began to seek out me and the others from the North East Rural Area for advice.
Chair of NERAC
In August 2020, Commissioner Ron Oakley and the Planning Department created a North East Rural Advisory Committee. The purpose was to get recommendations from the community about future commercial development in the North East Rural Area. The committee included a diverse group of stakeholders. I was elected the chair. The committee worked together to determine if the places proposed by the county’s consultant made sense for commercial zoning. In all but one case, the committee found that it did not.
During public comment, residents asked why the RV Park was not included as one of the proposed commercial areas. Commissioner Oakley mandated that the RV Park was not up for discussion even though it had not even been to the Planning Commission yet.
As we neared the end of the committee’s work, Mr. Oakley disbanded us without notice because he felt we were too negative because we didn’t want to see commercial development overrun the protected rural area of East Pasco.
Founding Member, The Pasco Communities Network
A few of us involved in advocating for good growth and the preservation of the North East Rural Overlay formed a group on Facebook called The Pasco Communities Network. We realized that the residents in East Pasco don’t know the concerns of residents in Central and West Pasco…and vice versa. Consequently, during elections, when everyone in the county gets to vote for the people running for commission seats in different districts, we were working against each other’s best interests.
We also realized that we needed to build an information exchange and a system of support. Time and again, when I attend Board of County Commissioner (BOCC) meetings, I hear the common refrain, “Residents don’t care, or they would be here to speak up.”
I was struck by how out of touch our representatives are with real life. Meetings are at 1:30 on a Tuesday (I encourage you to Google Florida Statute 125.66 as to why this is a problem.) Residents are disenfranchised from participating in local government by this timing. Further, you don’t know what’s on the agenda, so you have no way of predicting how long you will be waiting to have your 3 minutes to speak. While you speak, there’s a high likelihood you will be ignored, bullied, or mocked…or just treated as “check the box, yeah, we did that.” It’s not that residents don’t care; it’s that residents are treated like they don’t matter.
As we are able, our goal with The Pasco Communities Network is to provide technical assistance when we can to help communities protect themselves and network people across the county so they can support one another even by something so simple as attending meetings.
After a while, we considered that not everyone is on Facebook. So, in September 2023, I converted the Pasco Communities Network into an LLC and applied for 501C-4 status. We are a not-for-profit (vs. non-profit), and our C4 status will allow us to lobby. We also began a listening tour and began co-sponsoring meetings to develop candidates.
It was during our Listening Tour stops that I realized how closely my concerns and hopes for Pasco County were congruent with what residents were telling us were theirs. Out-of-control development, deferred impact fees & taxes, traffic, and lagging infrastructure, WATER, open space/green space, the downfall of ethical governance, and a lack of transparency and communication all came up in our conversations. Our county is being abused by out-of-town developers while residents are disrespected and marginalized.
Because people feel like their voices don’t matter, our social fabric is fraying. Over and over, people told us that it was time for a change. We talked about needing new commissioners. I was often asked if I would run.
Becoming A Candidate
On April 15th at 12:30 PM, I filed my paperwork to run for County Commissioner for District 1.
I don’t approach this on a whim. We are at a choice point in Pasco County, and I am tired of seeing our residents ruled rather than represented. If you feel the same way, I’d love to meet you. I also ask that you consider putting a sign in your yard after hurricane season. And even though it feels cheesy to ask, if you could add a monetary contribution, too, it would help…a lot.
What I Offer
Throughout my career I have been tapped to be a problem-solver. I've been able to work with diverse interests to find common ground, to find places where we can "hold hands across the table." That does not, however, mean giving in.
I've also been recognized for my leadership in almost every place I've ever worked. I believe good leadership starts with good listening. I also think compassion and empathy are required qualities in a leader. And, I believe strongly in mentorship. We need to build strong and resilient community members if we're going to hold on to our truly unique county and all that makes it so special.
I've lived in areas that have experienced explosive, unmanaged growth. I've seen it devastate the people and environment. I've watched people walk away from their homes - throwing their keys through the open front door and walking away because a new home in the development next door was less than what they had left on their mortgage. I was the president of my HOA in Sacramento and I also saw what mass production housing turns into and how frequently developers leave cities and residents holding the bag. I've also watched what happened in the town I grew up in; our charming town turned into a shell of what it once was.
When Dave and I built our home, I turned to him and said, "I'm home, if I leave this place it will probably be in a pine box." I love this place we all share and I know you do too. I'd like to represent your hopes for Pasco.
If you gotten this far - thanks for taking a journey with me. I'm big on transparency and communicating. It's been a "long and winding road" but now you can see why a typical resume wouldn't really show you why I'm ready to be your next County Commissioner.