Lisa Trei joined CISAC as the center's public affairs manager in February 2008. Prior to that, she worked at Stanford News Service for more than a decade, covering staff affairs, the biological sciences and the social sciences. She has extensive experience assisting Stanford faculty and researchers present and communicate their research to the media and broader public.

Before coming to Stanford in 1997, Trei was a special correspondent based in Tallinn, Estonia, for The Wall Street Journal Europe. She also covered the breakup of the Soviet Union and the reemergence of the independent Baltic states for U.S. newspapers and magazines such BusinessWeek, Newsweek, New York Newsday, The Dallas Morning News, the St. Petersburg Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and The Hartford Courant. During her six years in the Baltics, she contributed to and edited four books, and taught journalism at Tartu University, Estonia's leading university.

Trei holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, and bachelor's and master's degrees in social and political science from Cambridge University.