Lissie made Jiuzhaigou a temporary home for three months on a Friendship Park Exchange with Yosemite National Park.  She hails from New England which instilled in her a love for crisp autumn days and warming by a winter fire.  After studying environmental policy at the University of Maryland, she directed her focus to instructing environmental education.  Education, she believes, is the foundation for forming any policy.

Children (and adults too!) need to have the experience of seeing natural beauty such as waterfalls, getting caught in the rain, or listening to the sounds of wildlife.  As technologies lure children to play indoors and urban areas prevent them from exploring their backyards, we need to create opportunities to develop physical and emotional connections to experiencing nature.  These connections will hopefully convince people to protect natural places.

Lissie loves to experience the wild places of the world through back country skiing long hikes and reading by the river. As she travels she is reminded that even as cultures of the world are really different, nature is very much connected.