I am a freelance journalist who has specialized for many years in health and feature writing. I'm also a mom, a wife, and a daughter. I grew up in Chicago, where at one time or another I worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago, The Daily Calumet and Daily Southtown newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, and as a special correspondent for the Dallas Morning News, the Miami Herald, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Boston Globe, and American Medical News.

I started my reporting career in 1983 in Mexico City. I moved to the U.S. capital a decade later to work as a speechwriter in the Clinton Administration. My writing is an integral part of me. If you click onto my resume, or my stories, you will find I've covered a variety of topics from an expose of municipal corruption to a romp along the streets of Chicago to closely examine its "Cows on Parade." As a speechwriter I helped craft speeches, op-eds, and articles for Donna E. Shalala when she served as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and for James Lee Witt, when he was director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). I've also used my journalistic skills to volunteer as an editor for the human rights reports of the NGO, Mental Disability Rights International, based in Washington, D.C. My husband, Eric Rosenthal, founded MDRI in 1993 and is the Executive Director. In 2002, I helped edit MDRI's Kosovo report.

I used to bicycle everywhere. I used to participate in bicycle fundraising marathons (raising money for AIDS, MS). But I have not been on my bike since I began dating the man who is now my husband. This year is the year I get back on my bike.

I was a regular contributor to People magazine until I became pregnant. I had a very difficult pregnancy, hospitalized numerous times. I am planning to write about this experience and wish to hear from others who also became ill during pregnancy. In September, 2001, I was in Chicago while my husband traveled to Kosovo. We both returned home to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 9. We decided to return to work on September 11. You can imagine the rest.

Our daughter loves food, throwing objects off her highchair, laughing at herself in the mirror, reading and being read to, playing with the ball, sneaking up the stairs when the gate is unintentionally left open, hugging, imitating Mommy, playing with her grandparents, daddy arriving home from work, and millions of other activities. She is the happiest person we know.

I have an uncanny ability to remember phone numbers dialed only twice in my life. I can also find objects believed to be missing by my husband. I can usually find them by telling him where to look, and not actually being in the same room, or on the same continent, as either my husband or that which is missing.

Want to talk to me?

Then eMAIL me at lisa4news@aol.com!