The Lisa Family Foundation
The Lisa Family Foundation established the Lisa Fellowship Program at Arizona State University in 2005. In 2010, that program expanded under an endowment from the Lisa Family Foundation to the formation of the Lisa Foundation Patent Law Clinic at Arizona State University, one of the first PTO-approved Clinics in the country. Students in the Clinic receive hands-on experience in real-world patent prosecution, licensing, and litigation, and learn skills needed to recognize and obtain valuable and enforceable patents for clients.
Beginning in 2016, the Lisa Family Foundation joined as one of the annual title sponsors for the Chicago Fire Foundation P.L.A.Y.S. (Participate, Learn, Achieve, Youth Soccer) Program. The P.L.A.Y.S. Program is committed to enhancing the academic performance and development of key social and emotional learning (S.E.L.) skills of elementary school students through a sports-based curriculum. The P.L.A.Y.S. Program not only teaches soccer skills but also explicitly teaches S.E.L. traits and values such as emotional control, goal setting and attainment, cooperation, respect, communication, and teamwork. P.L.A.Y.S, which began in 2013, has seen more than 140,000 hours of soccer played by both boys and girls in grades 3-5 in 22 Public Schools throughout Chicagoland.
In 2016, the annual Lisa Family Foundation established the Lisa Family Innovation Grant for Neurosurgery Resident Research at the Barrow Neurological Institute of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. As part of that grant, the Foundation established the Barrow Innovation Center (BIC), which is designed to provide residents at the hospital with the appropriate channels for identifying, developing, and patenting inventions in collaboration with Lisa Foundation Patent Law Clinic.
In 2016, Mr. Lisa worked to combine the efforts of the ASU Lisa Foundation Patent Clinic and the BIC, setting up a unique program for the ASU Patent Clinic law students to collaborate with the neurosurgeons at the BIC to review new inventions, conduct patentability searches, and prepare initial provisional patent applications.
In 2018, the Lisa Family Foundation joined with the Barrow Neurological Foundation to establish the annual Barrow Innovation Center Patent Law Fellowship awarded each summer after national recruitment to one outstanding student committed to a career in patent law specializing the medical fields. The BIC Patent Fellow spends a summer working full time with the BIC neurosurgeons identifying and preparing patent applications and helping to commercialize key later stage medical inventions.
