Elizabeth L. Dreier ’89 died on November 11, 2024, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(The following was provided by Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service – Concord in November 13, 2024:)
Elizabeth L. Dreier ’89
Elizabeth “Lisa” Low Dreier, a global nutrition expert and international consultant, died peacefully on November 11 after a courageous four-year battle with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. She was 57.
Lisa’s life and family were intertwined with Martha’s Vineyard. Born in Boston on Oct. 25, 1967, she spent her first 20 summers on the island, initially visiting her grandparents Theodore and Barbara Loines Dreier on Seven Gates Farm. Later she inhabited a rustic house along the shore built in the up-island community by her parents, Katharine (Kit) and Theodore (Ted) Dreier Jr.
The third of four siblings who grew up in Cambridge, Lisa found joy running wild on Vineyard beaches, paths and dirt roads and with her neighborhood friends. She had summer jobs at Humphreys Bakery, Hillside Farm and the Vineyard Gazette.
Lisa graduated from Bowdoin College in 1989 with a BA in English literature and Romance languages. Having mastered Spanish during a year of study in Ecuador, she traveled solo through South America, South/Southeast Asia and the United States. She lived for two years in northern New Mexico and settled in California, where she worked for eight years for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Preparing for an international career, she earned joint master’s degrees in energy, resources and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She founded student groups to connect sustainable-development expertise across the campus.
A chance meeting with renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs led her to New York City to work on the United Nations Millennium Project. The initiative engaged global leaders and experts, aiming to eradicate poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, empower women, reduce child mortality and improve maternal health, among other goals.
Lisa managed the project’s Hunger Task Force, traveling in Africa, India and Europe to work with experts to reduce hunger. Convinced that the private sector could play a greater role, Lisa moved to Geneva, Switzerland, to work for the World Economic Forum. The nonprofit convenes an annual meeting of global leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
There she founded and led a global program to strengthen food security, mobilizing billions of dollars in investment in developing-country agriculture. She helped persuade top leaders at Davos to address hunger and food security. The program’s collaborative, decentralized approach was featured in a Harvard Kennedy School case study as an example of “Systems Leadership,” which brings together people from different fields to work towards a common goal.
“In her work, she aimed to end hunger, bringing the world’s farmers together with the global financial and political elite,” Fiona Watt, one of Lisa’s second cousins and forester for the state of New York, wrote in a tribute.
Fiona wrote that Lisa radiated calm, love and gratitude, enriching the lives of those around her. “And that is how I will remember her; her beautiful smile, her sing-songy voice, her gentle and loving acts of kindness, her text emojis, her attention to detail that most of us will never match, and her relentless, uplifting optimism and care for her fellow travelers no matter what life sent her way.”
Lisa relished her frequent international work travel, but an initial case of breast cancer � treated successfully in New York in 2015 � convinced her that her peripatetic lifestyle was no longer sustainable. She returned to California and after undertaking a 30-day silent meditation retreat, served as a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
In 2019, Lisa moved back to Cambridge, enabling her to support her aging mother. She continued to develop the Systems Leadership approach, as a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and as a consultant teaching executive education.
During the pandemic, Lisa’s breast cancer returned and was classified as Stage 4, which is incurable. She gradually let go of her work life and learned to live at a slower pace, appreciating walks with her mom, snuggles with her rescue dog AJ and time with family members and friends. She embraced a longstanding interest in Buddhism, welcoming the peace brought by daily meditation and Buddhist philosophy.
Lisa’s friends knew her as an optimistic, kind, loving and humorous person who was generous in her support of others. She loved to throw parties, go salsa dancing and attend street protests. She drew humorous cartoons of friends and family, wrote poetry and essays, and painted.
Her first published poem, written when she was 7, reflected her intimate connection with the natural world: “Rock, please talk to me / as I meet the evening face to face / as I wonder in and out of the world / as the sun shines its light on me / as I meet the evening face to face.”
Lisa died at a hospice center in Lincoln, surrounded by family members.
She is survived by her mother, Katharine “Kit” Dreier of Lincoln, Mass.; her sister, Ruth Dreier of Sebastopol, Calif.; her sister and brother-in-law, Kate and Thom Villars of Norwich, Vt.; her brother and sister-in-law, Rich and Brenda Read of Seattle, Wash.; her niece, Nehalem Kunkle-Read of Venice Beach, Calif.; her uncle, Jeff Eaton of Lincoln, Mass.; her aunt, Barbara Dreier of Livingston Manor, N.Y; and many beloved cousins and nieces. Her father, Ted Dreier Jr., died in 2019.