You might call Lisa Laurent Peckler of Riverwoods the North Shore’s doctor without borders.
While you’d think this prominent physician would be sequestered at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where she serves as Co-Vice-Chairman of the Radiology Department, or at the Advocate Medical Group, where she’s Medical Director of Imaging, instead you’ll find her influence in many different corners of the community, thanks to her enthusiasm for philanthropy and her insatiable drive to become a better doctor.
“I take my role very seriously, as a role model for women—not just women doctors,” she says.
She credits a lot of her achievement to the four years she spent working at Provident Hospital, near the Robert Taylor Homes housing project on Chicago’s South Side. Coming into contact with an underserved community in desperate need of quality medical care stirred her compassion. “It helped make me a better doctor,” she says.
And Peckler continues to seek out experiences that will make her an even better role model. Right now she’s earning her M.B.A. online through the University of Wisconsin, hoping to gain a better understanding of how to provide medical care in a cost-effective way.
“I want to be prepared to contribute as much as I can in the future,” she says of the recent challenges surrounding health care reform. She plans to share her new business acumen with other physicians.
Outside the medical world, Peckler serves on the planning commission of Riverwoods and has co-chaired a fundraiser for Arts and Riverwoods, an initiative that raises money for art scholarships benefiting underserved students in Lake County. She has also co-chaired two benefits for Northlight Theatre as a member of the theatre’s board.
And then, she travels the world fly-fishing in exotic locales with her husband, Scott. They always throw the fish back, which seems only appropriate, since she herself is the real catch.
