Lisa Forbes, PhD, LPC, RPT-S™, is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Counseling Program at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches courses in counseling, practicum and internship, children and adolescents, and play therapy. She is also Associate Director of ThinqStudio, a faculty-driven community focused on innovative and human-centered approaches to teaching and learning.

Lisa is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor who maintains a small clinical practice providing child-centered play therapy. Her scholarship and professional work explore play across psychotherapy, education, adulthood, and human development.

Her current clinical work focuses on Narrative Child-Centered Play Therapy, an emerging framework that understands children’s play as an embodied storytelling process through which meaning and new possibilities unfold. She presents and provides professional training nationally on play therapy and related topics.

Lisa is also the author of Play and the Heart’s Refusal to Harden, which explores play as a way of resisting the forces that make adults and systems more rigid, disconnected, and less alive. She previously co-founded Professors at Play, a global faculty network focused on the transformative possibilities of play in higher education, and has presented nationally and internationally on playful pedagogy.