Skip to Content

Lisa Ferreira

Principal / Student Life Practice Leader

AIA, LEED AP BD+C
Headshot of Lisa Ferreira with orange background

Lisa has always enjoyed drawing and creating things with her hands. She started early, learning to sew, knit, and crochet from her grandmother and serving dutifully as “little helper” to her grandfather in his workshop. In school, she sought a role that could fulfill her diverse interests in math, science, and art—and that’s where she found architecture. To offer younger generations a similar experience of discovery, she now strives to create places that pique students’ curiosity and offer them a sense of belonging.

Described by her colleagues as a “heat-seeking missile,” Lisa is known for her ability to articulate complicated issues and work with her team to define a common understanding and shared purpose. For every project, she is passionate about learning the culture of each institution, then crafting a solution to meet their unique needs.

As the leader of Goody Clancy’s student life practice, Lisa seeks to transform underperforming campus spaces into vibrant places of excitement and character for all students. Inclusion and belonging are essential to building community in student life projects—and it all starts in the design process. Lisa is constantly thinking about how stakeholder outreach can be improved to include more and diverse perspectives.

Lisa is passionate about live music, especially the blues—listening, dancing, and singing for anyone who will listen. If you want to find her on a summer weekend, look towards the water (she’s probably swimming, kayaking, waterskiing, or floating on a noodle).

My favorite part of this profession is the eureka moment when we arrive at a strategy that synergistically and elegantly resolves multiple programmatic and technical challenges at once. Working through the complexity of the projects we design becomes more than worth it in the end when the client lets us know that we got it right.
Back to top