Lissa Young is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York where she teaches in the Leadership and Management program.
Lissa is a 1986 graduate of the United States Military Academy, and a former Army aviator. She flew CH-47D “Chinook” cargo helicopters. During her Army career Lissa served at West Point on the faculty of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, and was the course director for PL300, the Academy’s core course in Leadership, from 1996-1999.
In 2002, after being discharged from the military, under the auspices of the now defunct Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, Lissa served as Raytheon Company’s lead sales representative for air traffic control systems in the Middle East. In 2007, Lissa was awarded a Presidential Fellowship by Harvard University, and in 2013 earned her doctorate there. Her research examines the effects of stereotyping and prejudice on interpersonal assessments of competence in high performance teams; how war has influenced the development and direction of the discipline of Social Psychology; and how scholars negotiate requests for their expertise to aid war efforts.
While at Harvard, Lissa served on Harvard’s committee to design and implement a new doctorate in Education Leadership. Lissa has also served the U.S. Army by piloting curricula that teach deploying soldiers Social Perspective Taking in an effort to improve their ability to understand and communicate with host nation citizens.
Lissa holds a Bachelor of Science in Literature from the United States Military Academy (1986), a Master of Arts degree in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas (1996), a Master of Education degree from Harvard University (2009), and a Doctorate in Education Policy, Leadership and Instructional Practice from Harvard University (2013). Lissa also earned and was awarded a doctoral concentration certificate from Harvard University’s Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality (2013).
Upon graduating from Harvard, Lissa joined a fellow Harvard classmate in an entrepreneurial start-up venture building a craft rum distillery in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The company, Privateer Rum, is now thriving.
After helping make rum for seven months, Lissa joined the faculty of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. In the fall of 2014, Lissa kick-started an Entrepreneurial Leadership course, the students of which earned five category championships at the Mid Hudson Regional Business Plan competition in April of 2015. Those same cadets placed 2nd in the New York State Business Plan competition later that same month. She participated in that adventure again with another passel of cadet teams in April of 2016. They did well, again, and Lissa will continue to offer the course as an elective in the Leadership & Management major offered by her department.
Beyond academics, Lissa is the faculty leader of two cadet club activities. She is in charge of the cadet radio station, WKDT, and she is a faculty mentor for the Academy’s LGBT cadet club, Spectrum. Additionally, Lissa serves as a faculty mentor for the women’s NCAA varsity soccer team, for which she was the captain in 1985 and 1986, when she was a cadet.
In her free time, Lissa studies the roots of jazz and hip-hop music, and is both a Harley and a slam poetry enthusiast.