Lisa Gottlieb is passionate about Compassionate Nonviolent Communication (NVC). In her therapeutic coaching practice she supports individuals, couples, and families by teaching skills and offering tools to bring more ease, peace, connection, and empathy into their lives.

Lisa also works with businesses, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, schools, universities, and other groups. She teaches effective methods to improve communication with participants, staff and customers with the aim of solving problems and increasing productivity and worker satisfaction.

Lisa is the co-founder of Great Lakes NVC, where she is a co-trainer with Rob Eames, an NVC certified trainer candidate. She offers online and in-person classes and interactive workshops, and along with Eames, she co-teaches courses specifically geared for couples.

Since 1977, Lisa has lived, worked, and raised her children in Ann Arbor, Michigan. From 2000 to 2020, she served as a school social worker for Washtenaw Intermediate School District in a variety of programs, including the court-involved youth program and in the county juvenile jail, for which she initiated the facility’s first vegetable gardens and created and taught yoga and mindfulness classes. She was also part of the Washtenaw County Juvenile Drug Court Treatment program for seven years, advocating for effective and compassionate educational services for participating youth and families. In this context she provided a variety of services for the county’s Girls’ Trauma Recovery program, including yoga, mindfulness, NVC, and talk therapy.

In addition to Nonviolent Communication, Lisa’s therapeutic coaching practice, classes and workshops are informed by her training in trauma-informed support, many years of clinical social work, school social work, yoga and mindfulness training, working with incarcerated youth and adults, the work of Pia Melody and twelve-step programs, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and her commitment and trainings to counteract patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, bigotry, and other hidden and more overt systems of oppression.

Lisa is a food security advocate and founder of Selma Café, a nonprofit food and breakfast pantry that supports sustainable and local agriculture. Lisa is an avid knitter and weaver, and loves spending time with her family and her 3 year old terrier mix Frankie, and traveling in Northern Michigan, one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.