Lisa Drew is a retired editor who held top editorial positions at Doubleday, William Morrow and Company, and Scribner.
Other notable authors she edited include Helen Thomas, Nathan Miller, John E. Douglas, Bruce Henderson, Christine Brennan, and Geraldine Ferraro.
[2] At one point, Drew was an assistant to Kenneth McCormick who oversaw such authors as Leon Uris, Irving Stone, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.
[2] Drew described the changes to the publishing industry with regards to women editors in the early 1970s in an interview with Art Silverman.
"[7] Lisa Drew, along with Ken McCormick, was the editor for Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family.
[9] Drew thought that the project was exciting and that to her knowledge, "no black writer had ever traced his origins back through slavery.
[11] At one point, Drew traveled to visit Haley in Jamaica in 1975 expecting to take back a finished manuscript and was surprised to find only 70% of the book done and another editor, Murray Fisher, who considered himself to be Alex Haley's personal editor, in residence and working on the book.
[11] Doubleday did not receive the book from Haley until 1976, ten years past its initial contracted due date.
[2] Drew left Doubleday in 1985 to join William Morrow and Company as a vice-president and senior editor.