Dr. Lisa Lauxman — who calls herself an “Oz from Az who went to DC” — grew up on a dairy farm in Dickinson County, Abilene, Kansas, where she learned early that cows won’t wait for your ambitions. She’s been “green and white” since jr. high where you were a ‘leprechaun’ and then in high school were known as The Irish” at Chapman High School. She claims to ‘bleed green’ as she and her brothers owe their existence to 4‑H — apparently, it’s how Mom and Dad met at a 4-H jr. leadership camp at Rock Springs Ranch.
With degrees from Kansas State (B.S), Emporia State (MBA), and the University of Arizona (MA, PhD in Educational Psychology), Lisa built a career that zigzagged through county offices, national agencies, and international forums. She joined Cooperative Extension as the Lyon County Extension 4-H Agent, then spent a stint as the Emporia/Lyon County Convention and Visitors Bureau Director before moving to Tucson, AZ where she started with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension as a Pima County 4-H Agent. Her path continued with zigs and zags through various interim and acting roles at the U of A before taking an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) position with USDA’s Cooperative, State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES ) which became USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). There she transitioned the Children, Youth and Families at Risk Program into a competitive program and included the 1890 extension partners. Then, becoming a career federal employee as the Director, Division Youth and 4-H, or 4‑H National Headquarters, Lisa was known as the “Head Clover” . She was reassigned as a National Program Leader in the Center for International Program at NIFA before retiring from federal service. She pivoted to an institutional contractor position embedded within the Strategic Planning and Activity Design (SPAD) team for the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) first with Environmental Incentive and then with Credence Management Solutions. Today she’s an independent consultant, still passionate about youth voice, civic agency, leadership, volunteerism, strategic plans, program fidelity and design and rigorous evaluation, still trying to make a difference following the 4-H Motto “To Make the Best Better”.
Her career involved domestic as well as international Positive Youth Development (PYD) programmatic efforts as she worked to create connections, competencies and capacity for youth-adult partnerships. Her tagline for 4-H is “4-H is youth and adults working together to create sustainable community change”. Whether a program had a clover on it, if it adhered to Positive Relationships, Positive Experiences, Positive Environments and allowed for Positive Risk-taking, then it reflected PYD. Adhering to a Do No Harm religious background, Lisa’s values are reflected in ensuring that all feel like they belong.
Her doctoral work — “To Belong or Not To Belong: The Differences Between Youth Who Are Enrolled and Who Dropped Out of a Youth Development Program” — foreshadowed the tensions she explores in this memoir: how the best intentions of youth development collide with politics, equity, identity, and democracy. With a career spanning farm fields, extension offices, and federal halls, Lisa has seen firsthand how 4‑H was more than just a program, rather it serves as a political symbol in a changing America.
Lisa’s scholarly works included a federal PYD research agenda, revitalizing a national 4-H strategic plan, and co-editing a special issue for the Journal of Youth Development on International Positive Youth Development. She is recognized for her leadership also within the National Association of Extension 4-H Youth Development Professionals (NAE4-HYDP) having served on the president track, as secretary, as vice-president for research, evaluation and programming and as a north central regional director. Lisa is a ‘geek’ when it comes to data and insists on beginning with the end in mind, theory of change or practice and logic models to ensure there are measurable indicators.
Wherever she goes, she takes her Kansas roots with a state motto of “Ad astra per aspera” which translates to “To the stars through difficulties” a symbol of overcoming challenges and achieving lofty goals. Lisa is ‘green’ through and through as she loves 4-H and is a generational 4-H’er.
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