Lizz Schallert

Lizz Schallert, an educator, therapist, and community organizer, has lived in the Portland area since 2008 and hails from the Midwest. They came to UP from Cuernavaca, México, having served as the Visiting Social Work Professor with Augsburg University's Center for Global Education and Experience since 2018. Lizz is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and runs their own therapy practice, Uprising Counseling LLC, where they connect community-based organizations and those who work with and for them with tools for advocacy, trauma care and mental health support. They earned their Master of Social Work with a concentration in International Community Development from Monmouth University in 2010. Their primary areas of teaching and practice are in experiential education and project-based learning, highlighting issues of social, economic, and environmental justice. Lizz has facilitated a wide variety of community-based projects, including worker-organizer trainings with local unions, trauma healing groups in county jails, a circle of care therapist network for activists doing international human rights work, a state-wide food stamp program for farmers' markets, cross-border solidarity campaigns, community forums and stakeholder mediations on environmental justice issues, participatory action research with college students, and direct action campaigns focused on workers' rights, racial justice, and environmental protections.