Amy Lisewski

Amy trained in improvisation and sketch comedy at the world-class Second City and IO West and with dozens of top teachers in Chicago, LA, and New York.  She studied Communications and Acting at Ithaca College. 

An ‘introverted extrovert’, Amy worked in both television and information research and management before founding Finest City Improv.   Amy holds a Masters in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University (CA) and helped biotech and high tech companies like Diversa, Verenium, and Synthetic Genomics improve their knowledge management for more than 15 years through her consulting company, Essential Information Partners. She is an alumnus of Teach For America, where she served two years teaching in New Orleans Public Schools from 1998-2000.

In 2012, after 3 years of splitting her time between San Diego and LA to study improv, Amy decided to stop the flow of improvisers heading north from San Diego (including herself!) by creating Finest City Improv, a home for long-form comedy improv in San Diego.  Since then, she has brought dozens of top improvisers to San Diego from LA and beyond to help grow the San Diego improv scene with workshops and guest appearances. She developed a 6-level curriculum to teach people how to improvise both on and off the stage and mentored dozens of top talent to be effective improv teachers.

Combining her love of improv with her experience in business and communications, Amy created the Tap Into Improv program for organizational and leadership development and has facilitated hundreds of workshops across the US for companies like WD-40, GoPro, Kaiser, and Reef.  She regularly works with top-level transformational mastermind groups to challenge participants to expand their comfort zones and boost their leadership confidence using improvisation.  She was a featured speaker at the Transformational Leadership Council, founded by Jack Canfield, in 2019.

In 2018 she created Speak Up!, a seminar to empower women and teens to find and use their voice more often at work or school in pursuit of their goals as leaders in their fields.