Lisa Brooks
YOU FOUND ME🤓
Lisa Brooks here. A Gen-Xer complete with latchkey-kid bona fides.
If you're here, and you are, it's likely you want to get in touch. Not a problem. Send your message to lb@lisabrooks.info.
But wait - there's more!
LiVING
WHERE I'VE BEEN
I'm a native San Franciscan raised in the SF/Bay Area.
After stints in Minneapolis and Washington DC I settled in Chicago, which has been my homebase since 1996.
WHERE I AM
In 2013 I bought and rehabbed a one hundred year old apartment building in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood, creating three comfortable living spaces - two for terrific neighbors, and one for me, my partner, and our three furry roommates.
WorkING
CURRENT PURSUIT
I own and operate 2xEDGE LLC, a company I founded to develop and sell 2xEDGE Staples, a landscape edging product that I've taken from concept to prototype to production.
The staples are available to purchase through 2xEDGE.com which is where I cut my teeth daily on all aspects of owning and operating an e-commerce business.
AN ENTREPRENEURIAL PAST
I come from generations of small business owners.
My maternal grandparents were tailors who owned and operated a tailor shop in Chicago.
My parents founded, and my mother operated, a photography studio in Berkeley, California for 20 years. It's where I started learning the ins and outs of small business as a kid, and where I worked through my late teens.
1999-2007. I owned and operated a web design business, new media for nonprofits, co., that provided design and development services to nonprofit organizations. It's where I learned coding, database design, and how to run a consulting business.
2008-2012. I co-created a small and mighty nonprofit, IssueLab, that focused on collecting and disseminating knowledge funded and produced by nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. It's where I learned about knowledge dissemination, open access, and digital publishing systems.
2012-2022. IssueLab was acquired in 2012 by (then Foundation Center, now) Candid where I co-directed the platform until 2022. It continues to serve as a unique and necessary open-access knowledge base.
balancing
When I'm not deep in the details of search engine optimization, editing a Youtube video, or handling any of the other dozens of tasks a small business requires, I'm having fun:
🌱gardening
🌳co-managing a small piece of forest in southwest MI with my life partner
🪑designing, building, and restoring furniture
🔨DIYing home improvement projects
🤗turning Chicago alley finds into treasured objects
🚲riding a bike (the older the better)
Learning
I'm on a constant knowledge gathering mission: researching how to get a Google knowledge panel for my business, investigating search engine optimization strategies, reading about trends in e-commerce, exploring DIY wainscotting patterns, and figuring out what size cable clamp fits a 1960s Sears 5-speed bike. 🙂
My formal education has set me up for a lifetime of continued learning pursuits. Pubs.
ALMA MATERS
Masters in Library Sciences from the iSchool at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Bachelors of Science in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Associates of Arts degree in Liberal Arts from Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California.
ENDING
WOMAN-OWNED
SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
❤️ UNITE!