Gun Violence Prevention- Grassroots Advocacy & Public Health
Session Speakers
Lisa Geller
Lisa Geller is the Director of State Affairs at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, a Center housed in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Lisa’s work focuses on research, advocacy, and implementation of evidence-based gun violence prevention policies, including extreme risk protection orders and domestic violence protective orders. Lisa is also a mayoral appointee on the District of Columbia’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board. Lisa graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in political science. She earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) in health policy and injury and violence prevention from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Sara Knizhnik holds a BA from Northwestern University and an MA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She served as a university-level, English-as-a-Second-Language Instructor at various universities in the Chicago area for 17 years before becoming a professional gun violence prevention (GVP) and criminal justice reform advocate. She has served in recent years as the Organizer of the Illinois Gun Violence Prevention Coalition and then as Director of Community Engagement for Newtown Action Alliance (NAA), a national gun violence prevention GVP organization founded in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy. She also served as the Director of Constituent Affairs for State Representative Bob Morgan (IL-58). Sara is currently Chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Initiative at the Lake County (IL) State’s Attorney’s Office. In November 2022, she was elected to the Lake County Board and represents District 18, which includes Vernon Hills, Buffalo Grove, Hawthorn Woods, Kildeer, Long Grove and Lake Zurich. Sara believes passionately in local government and in the power of grassroots activists to build a better America. Sara lives in Vernon Hills, Illinois with her husband and two children.
Elliot Lieberman
Dr. Elliot Lieberman is an otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeon, husband, father, mass shooting survivor and advocate for gun violence prevention. He currently practices at North Shore Ear, Nose & Throat Associates in suburban Chicago.
A survivor of the Highland Park, Illinois July 4th mass shooting, Dr. Lieberman’s role in advocacy evolved in the aftermath of his own trauma. Although his family was not physically harmed at the parade, he witnessed the emotional turmoil that permeated himself, his family, friends and thousands of neighbors and quickly identified his new role of physician and mass shooting survivor as an unheard voice in the gun violence prevention movement. With the organization March Fourth, this past December he and his wife, a pediatrician, recruited a coalition of over sixty physicians from twenty-five states to meet with over forty Senate offices in Washington, D.C. to present an evidence-based viewpoint for reinstating the federal assault weapons ban. In addition to lobbying, Dr. Lieberman has participated in dozens of media interviews to speak as a physician and gun violence survivor. Even though his medical specialty rarely treats victims of gun violence, he believes that physicians of any specialty are uniquely qualified to organize and present data to politicians as well as communicate the ballooning list of reasons we need to curb gun violence through policy.