Faces of Brown: Debbie Lister

Faces of Brown is an occasional feature to introduce the Brown community to colleagues.

by Kate Bramson

Reflecting on her career change, Debbie Lister reminds her husband she has been at Brown for five years and hasn’t had a death threat yet.

In some ways, her job as manager of event support in Facilities Management is quite different than her former career as a forensic auditor. In that job, she investigated employees who committed fraud or embezzled funds – and yes, she occasionally got death threats.

But there are similarities in the jobs, also.

“When you’re preparing for trial, you dot your i’s and cross your t’s – dealing with people’s lives, you can either make them or break them,” Lister said. “And here, with events, it’s the same detail – to make sure everyone has what they need.”

She’ll handle more than 5,400 events this year at Brown. That includes more than 300 events in the four days of Commencement, the preparation of exam rooms, lectures throughout the year, Orientation, Parents Weekend and the inauguration of President Simmons (“That was an added bonus,” she said).

She tackles her biggest annual event – Commencement – armed with a four-inch-thick binder that includes every service order for each event. Also close at hand are her pager and the red-and-black cell phone that plays “Take Me out to the Ball Game” when it rings.

“Little League mom,” she explains after the cell phone has played its tune. Lister and her husband, attorney Lee Blais, have one son, 15-year-old Kyle. Much of her spare time is spent attending Kyle’s varsity baseball and basketball games.

But the family knows that for the four days of Commencement, Lister has to put them on hold while working from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

By early May, she will have compiled her white Commencement binder, along with 25 duplicate copies for all those involved with making Commencement run like clockwork.

Throughout it all, a sense of humor is really necessary, she said.

“I’ve told my staff, if someone doesn’t get a chair, nobody’s going to die,” she said. “It will all work out. I love this job.”