Lisa-Marie Napoli, Ph.D., is Director of the Political and Civic Engagement (PACE) Program in the College of Arts and Sciences and Director of Faculty Relations in the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. With a lifelong commitment to build bridges across differences, she is trained as a facilitator and mediator and has successfully demonstrated these skills for over 30 years. With this passion to bridge conflicting perspectives for greater understanding, she specializes in conflict management research, leadership and public policy education, civic skills development, community engaged learning, and capacity-building practices to support deliberative democracy. She joined the PACE program at its inception in 2009, helping to shape the program and lead the development of curricular content for core courses. In addition to being in directorial leadership positions in PACE for 10 years, a few other outstanding contributions to the program include her involvement as Founder of Voices for Democracy and Constructive Conversation, an initiative that trains students, faculty, and community members in facilitation skills and convenes deliberative dialogue, and Founding Chair of IUB's Big Ten Voting Challenge, a decade-long effort to improve voter registration, nonpartisan voter education, and voter engagement on campus. Both latter initiatives are designed to enhance better dialogue, pluralism, and healthy democratic engagement for students, faculty, and community members.
As a national leader in civic engagement, Napoli is currently a Fellow with Campus Compact in Scaling Discourse in Higher Education and previously, as a Bridge Building Fellow. This year, she co-edited Facilitative Leadership: Building Capacity for Divisive Times (Waveland Press, 2026; with Lori L. Britt). She has published several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, journal articles, blogs, and newsletter articles on public deliberation, students and politics, mediation, workplace culture, dispute system design, and conflict management. She is strongly affiliated with several national organizations and served on the National Issues Forum Institute Board for four years leading the Executive Team through a major transition. Napoli worked for a decade with the Kettering Foundation in a variety of research-learning exchanges exploring ways to make democracy work as it should. Also, as a Kettering faculty member for many years in Practices of Democratic Initiatives (Centers for Public Life), designing curriculum and leading training for dozens of participants each year from across the country engaging in year-long cohort experiences with a goal of building capacity to convene and lead democratic deliberation forums. Locally, she serves the larger Bloomington community as a Public Engagement Consultant, Trainer, Facilitator, and Conflict Coach.
The College of Arts