Lisa Rawlings, MBA
Director, Workforce Development and Job Readiness
Phone: 410-706-1931
Email: lrawlings@umaryland.edu
Lisa Rawlings is a Baltimore native who has worked in higher education for more than a dozen years.
Rawlings’ work in community engagement started with her experience in launching a number of community college-university collaborations. She directed the University of Maryland BioPark’s BioWorkforce Initiatives (BWI), a series of collaborations between the University of Maryland and Baltimore City Community College (BCCC) to address the shortage of life science professionals. BWI was funded with a generous $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor and supported students at BCCC’s Life Science Institute located at the BioPark pay for college, get jobs, and transfer to bachelor’s degree programs.
Most recently, she served as associate director of the Center for Community-Based Engagement and Learning. In this role, she supported University of Maryland faculty, staff, and students who were engaged in our local community.
In 2006, Rawlings launched the Hillman Entrepreneurs Program, an innovative partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park and Prince George’s Community College. This award-winning program, which has since expanded to include Montgomery College, provides scholarships and mentoring for entrepreneurially minded community college students of any major transferring to the University of Maryland. She continues to serve on the Hillman Entrepreneurs Advisory Committee.
Prior to this position, Ms. Rawlings worked at the University of Maryland Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, where she did financial/policy analysis and research. At the Robert H. Smith School, where she pursued a PhD degree, Rawlings taught introductory and advanced finance courses. She was nominated for the 2001 Parents' Association Teaching Award. Before her return to academia, Rawlings was a financial manager for Procter & Gamble for eight years.
Rawlings received a BSE in Systems Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Michigan, where she was a Consortium for the Graduate Study of Management fellow. In 2013, Rawlings was a Marano Fellow in the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative Sector Skills Academy.
