Lisa Honig has been an activist from very early on – picketing against housing discrimination at age 6, challenging San Francisco public school’s policy forbidding girls from wearing pants at age 14, marching against the Vietnam War, and protesting the U.S. involvement in El Salvador. She attended Bennington College and Brown University, and began a career as a fundraiser and benefit concert producer at Bread & Roses, which took entertainment to prisons, hospitals and other institutions. She then became an independent fundraising consultant and concert producer. Her fundraising efforts included raising funds for several public interest lawsuits such as the Karen Silkwood case and cases fighting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

She co-founded the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, a publication that provided advice for developing grassroots fundraising efforts. She was the first Development Director for Equal Rights Advocates. In 1988, she got a J.D. at UC Berkeley School of Law, and went on to clerk at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. She then practiced primarily employment law for 15 years, specializing in individual and class action civil rights cases, including racial and sexual discrimination and harassment. When she left her law practice, she returned to an old passion of weaving, and opened a weaving studio in San Francisco. She has served on many Boards of Directors, including the ACLU of Northern California for several decades as well as the National Board of the ACLU. After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Lisa reactivated her bar membership so she could defend people arrested at protests related to the new administration. She co-founded Representation Matters in 2020 to try to change the face of power.