On any given day, 42-year-old Lisa Clampitt can be sure that approximately twenty very wealthy, successful New York men are eagerly awaiting her next call. They’re paying no small sum for her time—just three months of Clampitt’s services cost $5,000.
But it’s not really Clampitt they’re after—she is a married woman, and happily so. They are actually eager for the world that Clampitt provides an entrée to: a world full of beautiful, successful, charming women anxious to be paired up with these very eligible men.
Clampitt didn’t set out to be a professional matchmaker, though it seemed to be a hobby that led to her current professional success. “I was always a matchmaker,” she admits. “I have set up so many of my friends who now have kids and have been married for years.”
When it came time for college, Clampitt wanted to study social work, but her father insisted she pursue a liberal arts education at New York University. After graduating, she spent some time working for her father, and then later worked for Child Protective Services in New York. After six months, she left to pursue her master’s degree in social work at the University of Michigan. “It was the only school I applied to,” she says. “It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I had always been a B student, but in social work, I got A’s.”
“Brett Seabury was my all-time favorite professor,” Clampitt recalls fondly. “He is such an out-of-the-box thinker.”
Clampitt worked in a variety of high-stress pediatric social work jobs in Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles and after a few years moved back to New York. She convinced a local matchmaking company to let her create a relationship coaching program for their clients based on her social work degree.
In 2001 Clampitt founded VIP Life, a self-described “exclusive, elite social club that specializes in professional introductions of exceptional, relationship-oriented men and women.” Since then, VIP Life has gone on to receive numerous accolades, frequently touted as New York’s number one matchmaking service.
That year Clampitt also created a nonprofit, Children’s PressLine, which thrives today as a program dedicated to teaching children ages 8 to 18 to be reporters and editors.
—A version of this article, written by Ismat Mangla, was published in the spring 2006 issue of Michigan Alumnus.