Lisa-Michele Church

Ms. Church’s professional background includes more than 30 years of both public and private service as an attorney and community activist. She served as Vice President/General Counsel for a local Utah company where she was involved in negotiating the venue agreements for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games to hold the downhill events at a ski resort in an environmentally responsible manner and to house the Olympic family at two downtown hotels. She served in the Cabinet of two Utah Governors where she advocated for issues of social justice at all levels, from helping individual families negotiate the challenges of mental illness to advocating at a national level for more effective substance abuse prevention strategies during Utah's methamphetamine epidemic.

As Executive Director of Utah's Department of Human Services Ms. Church oversaw 5,000 employees and a $700 million annual budget addressing child protection, juvenile justice, mental illness, drug addiction, services for people with disabilities, elder abuse, and child support collection. Her initiatives included rebuilding Utah's child protection system to exit from 15 years of Federal Court oversight as an exemplary system and obtaining more resources to assist families struggling against drug addiction. The meth epidemic in Utah disproportionately affected women, so she tailored her approaches to that audience, including producing an award-winning television campaign to raise awareness of the crisis. Following that service, she was appointed as the Administrator for Utah's Juvenile Court system, where she was able to continue my advocacy for youth and families across 29 courts statewide. She worked with judges and court staff to prioritize the needs of underserved youth such as girls in the juvenile justice system and teenagers who are aging out of foster care without family attachments.

Her community volunteer service focuses on issues of social justice, especially for youth and women who need additional advocacy. Ms. Church worked as President of Women Lawyers of Utah to encourage more women to apply for judgeships, and then was appointed by Governor Michael Leavitt to the Judicial Nominating Commission where she was able to advocate for many women appointed to the Utah courts. She worked as chair of the Family Counseling Center to provide desperately needed mental health counseling to the working poor and shored up their business and financial planning to provide ongoing sustainability to these efforts. Ms. Church has served for many years on the boards that champion higher education, specifically the Dixie State University Board of Trustees and the Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority. She is a first-generation college graduate and sees the importance of providing college educations for youth across all income groups in Utah. She is also passionate about bringing resources to homeless youth through service with Volunteers of America.

Her other interests include historical research about the American West and vernacular architecture. She presents to a variety of scholarly and community groups on such topics as hand-made adobe brick homes, early 20th century apartment buildings, vintage roadside motels, and tourism development along the Arrowhead Highway in mid-20th century American West. Her published work includes the books Historic Salt Lake City Apartment Buildings (2018) and Sunlight and Shadow – The Page Ranch Story (2017), along with numerous articles, photographic essays, and brochures. Her website www.RelentlessHistory.com illustrates some of these efforts and you can also see her work by visiting @relentlesshistory on Instagram.