Meet Rev. Lisa K. Sykes

Rev. Lisa Sykes graduated from the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar, in 1987, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1990.  She was ordained in the Virginia Annual Conference in 1990 as a probationary deacon and in 1992 as an elder in full connection.  Her training for ministry included chaplaincy work at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital-Texas Children’s Hospital, part of the Houston Medical Center. 

Lisa served the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church for thirty-four years, pastoring four churches, and is now retired.  

During her junior-year abroad from UVA, Lisa met her husband, Seth, a native Scot, at the University of St. Andrews. They married in 1989 and are the parents of three sons: Adam, Wesley and Joshua.  Wesley was diagnosed with autism in 1998 and with mercury poisoning in 2000.  Since that time, in addition to being a wife, mother, and minister, Lisa has been an advocate for safe, mercury-free vaccines and for children with disabilities. She has addressed the Institute of Medicine, the United Nations Environment Programme and many grass-roots advocacy organizations across the country. She also was an invited clergy participant in the Aspen Institute’s Justice & Society Program.

She led the Office of Special Counsel Project, resulting in a federal call for whistle-blowers on the issue of mercury in medicine in 2004. As part of the Coalition for Mercury-free Drugs (CoMeD), a 501c3, she filed a Citizen’s Petition and was party to a federal lawsuit seeking a ban and recall of mercury-containing drugs. She and her husband were also litigants in a case they filed over mercury in her Rho-D shots, administered when she was pregnant. Lisa’s proudest moment in the fight against mercury in medicine came when the United Methodist Church passed the first and only faith-based global resolution “On Protecting Children from Mercury-containing Drugs” in 2008.

Late nights, while pastoring a church and raising three sons, she wrote her book Sacred Spark, to chronicle the cutting-edge treatment of her son’s mercury poisoning, to document the herculean efforts of parents to stop mercury-induced injuries and to identify the heroes, scientists and theologians alike, who refuses to accept institutional lies about the safety of Thimerosal.

Today, Lisa and Seth live in Manakin-Sabot, Virginia, near Wesley.  Lisa is currently the Director of CoMeD, and she continues pursuing her calling to ban Thimerosal globally. Her hobbies include travel, writing and photography.