About
Alisa Costa
Engaged Communities CEO & Consultant
Alisa has more than 25 years of community organizing, public relations, and public policy experience with real results. She has implemented effective organizing and communications strategies across dozens of communities that have increased voter turnout, empowered collective action by disenfranchised people, and improved program participation and outcomes.
Prior to moving to the Berkshires, Alisa spent more than 20 years in New York’s Capital Region working in statewide grassroots and public policy organizations including the New York Civil Liberties Union, New York AIDS Coalition, Family Planning Advocates, and Hunger Solutions New York.
Alisa currently serves on the Berkshire District Attorney’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee, the DEI Task Force for the City of Pittsfield, and the board of Berkshire Business and Professional Women. She is a graduate of the University at Albany where she received a Bachelors Degree in political science and studied Nonprofit Management at Rockefeller College. She is a certified Bridges Out of Poverty facilitator.
View full resume: Alisa’s LinkedIn page
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Listen to a recent Backstory: Let’s Hear It podcast where Alisa explains how uncomfortable conversations became her ‘thing.’
Land Acknowledgement
It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are learning, speaking, and gathering on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok or Mohican people, who are the indigenous peoples of this land, now called Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Despite tremendous hardship in being forced from here, today their community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We pay honor and respect to their ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all.
A land acknowledgement is just one tiny piece of the work and only moves us a little toward reconciliation, but it is important to take action. While we do not have the power to redistribute land, we do give a portion of our income to the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans. We realize we do not have the power to return this land to them — we will work toward this goal and encourage others to do the same.