About

Lisa is a biracial, multi-hyphenate artist who began life with music as her primary mode of expression. After a childhood of studying piano and violin in the Virginia suburbs of D.C., she did a smattering of community theater before going to college for vocal performance and psychology. The second focus quickly became musical theater after her freshman year and she graduated with both a Bachelors of Music in Voice and a Bachelors of Arts in Music Theater.

Moving to NYC after graduating, she soon made her Off-Broadway debut utilizing her multi-hyph skills of being an actor who plays violin and within that first year was cast as Christmas Eve in the national tour of Avenue Q. Since then she has been on Broadway, Off-Broadway, another national tour, many regional theaters, two of the Law & Orders, and a Hallmark movie.

Then the pandemic happened and the multi-hyphenation broadened. In response to the continued brutalization of Black and Brown bodies, Lisa began organizing in her community in Queens through a social and racial justice group. But when the Atlanta shootings happened, she was cracked open realizing that she never thought she would have to march for herself. This paradigm shift forced her to confront her white-washed upbringing as a biracial Korean-Finn and reckon with how white she lived her own life. It also brought to light a fear for her future child, as she was also pregnant, and reinforced a new mission to bring more awareness to the female API and biracial experiences. So she started writing.

Since then she’s had five regional productions of a play she co-wrote The Porch on Windy Hill as well as a sold-out festival run of her first multi-disciplinary piece, Kim Loo Gets a Redo at the New Ohio Theater. She is currently working on multiple pieces: Zitkala-Sa’s Astonishing Wild West for which she and her co-creator Lizzie Hagstedt were semi-finalists with the Eugene O’Neill Music Theater Conference and Aigoo, Jinjja? / Oh my God, Really? with co-writer Drayton Alexander, plus others that are slowly finding their way to daylight.

Finally, Lisa is very gratefully a mother and the main take-away here is that art is her medium and her mission is to make this world a better and more beautiful place for her beloved child.