Lisa Petrison

Lisa Petrison is the executive director of Paradigm Change, an organization that she founded in 2013. Lisa completed her doctorate in marketing and social psychology at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 1998, a few years after first acquiring myalgic encephalomyelitis. She was a tenure-track professor in the business school at Loyola University Chicago until becoming disabled with the disease in 2001 and mostly bedridden with it in 2007. Lisa also has served as a marketing consultant and executive speaker for a number of different companies, including California Pizza Kitchen, Wells Fargo, Discover Card, Shell Oil, Hallmark Cards, Visa, Abbott Laboratories, Rodale Press and Cox Cable. Prior to getting her Ph.D., she worked in marketing/PR for the Chicago Association for Retarded Citizens and in the banking and video games industries, and was a reporter for Adweek magazine. She has a B.S. in journalism and an M.S. in marketing communications from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Since 2008, Lisa has been focusing her attention on the role of mold toxins and other environmental toxicity in chronic neuroimmune illness. Her book about the life of Erik Johnson, "Back from the Edge," was published in 2013. She also co-wrote with Erik a guidebook for those pursuing mold avoidance, called "A Beginner’s Guide to Mold Avoidance." She also is the editor of the book "Erik on Avoidance." Lisa spent about five years traveling around the western half of the U.S. in a non-moldy RV, visiting 25 states and spending time in hundreds of different locations. She now is mostly recovered (with pre-illness levels of cognitive capacity, resolution of chemical sensitivities and greatly reduced levels of mold reactivities), and credits mold avoidance and detoxification for her improvements. The Paradigm Change website: www.paradigmchange.me