Lisa Batiste
Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director, The 15 White Coats®

Lisa Batiste serves as the inaugural Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of The 15 White Coats®, hired by the organization’s board and founders to build its programming model, strategic framework, and operational infrastructure as its first executive. Under her leadership, the organization has grown from a focused pilot initiative into an expanding university partnership model designed to strengthen the path from undergraduate education to medical school readiness.

Central to that growth is the Performance Interface Model™ for Funding The Future Physicians University Partnership, which Lisa architected to serve as a connective infrastructure across the undergraduate to medical school continuum. Rather than operating as a standalone program, the model coordinates the developmental supports, readiness expectations, mentorship, experiential engagement, and performance feedback that students must navigate on the physician pathway, aligning institutions, funding, and student outcomes into a single, scalable structure. Since stepping into the role, Lisa has also assembled the organization’s team and established its governance and financial systems, positioning The 15 White Coats® to grow its impact across the country.

A U.S. Air Force veteran with a background in chemistry and instructional design, Lisa has spent her career turning fragmented, uneven guidance into clear roadmaps that students can actually follow. The physician pathway is crowded with advice, some of it sound, much of it conflicting, and almost none of it tailored to the individual student trying to figure out a next step. The Performance Interface Model™ replaces that confusion with structured, individualized guidance backed by the full support of an organization, so that students can see where they are, what comes next, and why it matters.

That scientific and instructional foundation is grounded in formal training. Lisa earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Southern University and A&M College and a Master of Education in Instructional Design and Technology from Liberty University, and she is currently a PhD candidate in Organizational Systems and Performance, work that pairs scientific rigor with deep expertise in learning design.

At Louisiana State University, Lisa developed the institution’s first comprehensive tutor training framework, which later expanded into a university-wide online training system. She also collaborated with the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to design nationally supported STEM pipeline initiatives, cultivating students toward doctoral research pathways through mentorship, experiential learning, and metacognitive engagement strategies. Her scholarship on student development and institutional performance has been published in peer-reviewed journals and recognized nationally, including through her participation in the Gordon Research Conference and her contributions to programs honored with the Presidential Award for Learning Centers in Higher Education.

Beyond her executive work, Lisa has served in governance as Board Chair of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, where she provided strategic oversight for a human services organization with a multimillion dollar budget delivering programming across disaster recovery, housing stability, immigration services, and mental health support.

Alongside her leadership at The 15 White Coats®, Lisa is the founder of MyGRIT Course®, an education innovation platform built on more than fifteen years of original research into student learning and metacognition.
Across every stage of her career, Lisa’s focus has remained consistent: designing sustainable frameworks that build intellectual confidence, strengthen institutional alignment, and create clear, performance-driven pathways forward. Through The 15 White Coats®, she continues to lead that work on a national scale.