About Lisa Hammer, RCA

Lisa Hammer is a native Miamian, raised in a family of nature-lovers who camped and explored all of Florida's wilderness areas.  She attended Palmetto High School, then the University of Florida, where she graduated in 1981 with a B.S. degree in Agriculture.  She majored in Fruit Crops, and earned a Certificate of Specialization in Tropical Agriculture.  View resume »

She enrolled in the Master's program in Tropical Agriculture at the University of Hawaii, and worked in the Honolulu Zoo aviary caring for the plants in the bird cages.  A year later she returned to Florida to accept a faculty position as an Urban Horticulture Extension Agent at the University of Florida Cooperative Extension Service in Miami-Dade County.  While working full-time, she attended graduate school at Florida International University and gradulated with an M.S. degree in Biology in 1987, with thesis research in pollination ecology.

Changing her focus from sustainable tropical agriculture to South Florida landscaping and arboriculture, she began her own consulting practice in Feburary 1987, integrating her sustainable agriculture background with urban landscaping needs. 

In 1992 she joined the International Society of Arboriculture and became a Certified Arborist (#SO-0758). That same year she was accepted into the American Society of Consulting Arborists and became a  Registered Consulting Arborist (RCA #333).  She was one of the earliest women members of ASCA and the only RCA in Miami-Dade County for more than 25 years.