A Johnson City native, Lise Cutshaw holds two bachelor’s degrees from ETSU, in Education/Music and Journalism/Communication and an M.A. in Professional Communication. She was a reporter, editor and page designer for newspapers in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky, including the Johnson City Press, Bristol Herald-Courier, Kingsport Times-News, Washington County News and Asheville Citizen-Times.
Cutshaw has also served as director of public relations at Union College in Kentucky and as client services director at The Corporate Image, Bristol, Tenn. She also worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a technical editor while living in the Washington, D.C. area.
Cutshaw advised the East Tennessean campus newspaper and the Buccaneer yearbook from 1990-1995, then returned to ETSU in 2000 to teach journalism, public relations and advertising writing, editing and design full time in the Department of Communication (now Media + Communication).
From 2011 to January 2021, Cutshaw served as media & marketing coordinator for the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts at ETSU before making the transition to overseeing marketing and communications for the ETSU Martin Center for the Arts.
She continues to serve as an adjunct instructor in PR and advertising at ETSU. Off campus, Cutshaw is a mom, a caregiver, a church musician, a theater and classic film nerd and a perennial gardener.