Lisa Cataldo

Lisa Cataldo grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts in a large Irish-Italian family. She attended Brown University where pursued a double major in Semiotic and Music. After working in development for an independent school, she moved to New York to study real estate finance, and received an MBA from Columbia University in 1986. She worked in real estate lending and investment banking for nine years before leaving the corporate world. Before entering seminary at Union Theological Seminary, Cataldo lived at the L'Arche Daybreak community outside of Toronto, Canada, where she engaged in spiritual direction with the late Henri Nouwen. This began an involvement with the worldwide L'Arche movement which continues today.

While completing her PhD at Union Theological Seminary, Cataldo taught high school theology at St. Peter's Prep, a Jesuit boys' school in Jersey City, NJ. She simultaneously completed psychoanalytic training at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in Manhattan and is a licensed Psychoanalyst. She has won numerous awards, including the Union Theological Seminary Traveling Fellowship, the Robert Lynn Wood Teaching Fellowship, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies Educators' Award, and the Stephen A. Mitchell Award for analytic writing. Cataldo is the Vice President of the Board of Directors of L'Arche Long Island, and maintains a small private psychotherapy practice.