Lisa Bottomley

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Manager, Extension Volunteer Administration | Senior Specialist

Lisa Bottomley is a senior specialist in MSU Extension and serves as the interim associate director of the Children and Youth Institute and the manager for MSU Extension volunteer administration. She began working at MSU Extension in July 2000. Lisa completed her undergraduate studies at Central Michigan University where she received a bachelor of science in sociology and earned a master of arts in youth development from Michigan State University.

In her interim role, Lisa provides supervision and support to academic staff in the Children and Youth Institute, leads the grant identification and selection process, and manages open academic staff positions. Lisa also provides leadership to volunteer management processes throughout the organization. She works closely with other leaders to ensure that MSU Extension attracts, retains and trains high quality volunteers who are thoroughly vetted by the organization. This includes managing the Volunteer Excellence Support Team (VEST).

Lisa served as acting co-director of the Children and Youth Institute from January 2018 - April 2019. Prior to that, she provided training, resources and support to staff with mentoring and volunteer coordination responsibilities as a mentoring specialist. She was the lead trainer for SAFE: Preventing Child Molestation through Screening, served as the project leader for the Ready to Go: Mentor Training Tool Kit, and has presented at numerous national and international conferences. Lisa has taught an online graduate course on youth mentoring for MSU and a course for volunteer managers. She has been a member of the National Mentoring Resource Center's Stakeholders Council and has been a member of the Mentor Michigan Providers Council.

Lisa was an MSU Extension educator at the Ottawa County MSU Extension office for eight years prior to moving to her current position. In this role, she managed the Journey 4-H Youth Mentoring program and the Ottawa County Mentoring Collaborative.