An Afternoon with Radio Dunedin Hostess Lisa Dozois

On a recent chilly and overcast Tuesday, Lisa Dozois stood by a lone bench near the water at Kiwanis Park. The wind whipped her hair back revealing her full smile.

Lisa hosts a new weekly radio show dedicated to Dunedin lifestyle and entertainment on WTAN AM 1340. Radio Dunedin airs every Thursday from noon to 1 p.m.

Lisa, a Pisces, said it’s no wonder she enjoys sitting by the water watching the sun set near her old home. She used to live near Kiwanis Park just a few paces from the water’s edge, then moved north, only to return to the area in 2002.

She heads down a piece to where the air is warmer and thick with the scent of fresh bread and pizza. Lisa orders a pizza for her family and greets the storeowner, and then her neighbors, who happen to be sitting in one of the booths. 

Born in Northampton, Mass., Lisa’s family moved to California when she was 8 years old. She went to high school and college there, graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a political science degree, and then returned “back to her roots” in the northeast, she said, “to have a fresh start.” Lisa worked for a state agency as a regional planner and as a catalog manager for a mail order company where she coordinated trade shows and approved copy and catalogs before they went to press. That’s where Lisa met her husband, Len Dozois.

As Len Dozois describes it, he asked her out "100 times" before she finally said “yes.”

They teamed up in parenthood – they have a 15-year-old daughter, Gina, together, and Lisa is also stepmother to Len’s son and daughter, both in their 20s – and have now teamed up for the Radio Dunedin venture. Lisa Dozois is Radio Dunedin’s personality, while Len manages the business side of things.

Radio Dunedin, which first aired on Oct. 28, was something of a steady, forward movement for them, like the ebb and flow of the ocean itself.

Always the creative, resourceful type, Lisa pursued writing as a viable option for staying home with her daughter. She tried her hand at travel writing and began attending travel-writing seminars.

“[I] learned that you don’t have to travel far to be an effective travel writer,” she said.

Her travel writing spurred the creation of her travel blog, DiscoverDunedin.com, a personal account of Dunedin sights and events that feature her own pictures – kind of a fair exchange for her childhood dreams of becoming a flight attendant.

Evolving from the written word, she moved from the computer monitor to the microphone.

“Well, I’m new to the limelight, too, you have to remember,” she said. “So I’ve pretty much spent the last eight years in my office as a ghost writer.”

Now her voice can be heard over the WTAN airwaves. She has interviewed many of Dunedin’s city officials and organizers. And the show is catching more ears than local listeners. She said people are tuning in from as far away as China.

Len and Lisa Dozois said they hope Radio Dunedin can help people succeed in their community.

Lisa said, “I didn’t have a degree in a lot of the other things in my life, and based on my past history, it can become what I want it to become, so in essence, maybe I can be an inspiration.”