Shalisa James is an award-winning vocalist, musician, speaker, and show producer based in Orlando, Florida. Her career reads like a story no one would believe if she hadn’t lived it. She sang for Michael Jackson at the height of his Thriller fame, and he told her voice reminded him of himself as a child. She spent a casual evening at Liza Minnelli’s Upper East Side apartment, gathered around the piano in five-part harmony. Her off-Broadway show with Toxic Audio won the Drama Desk Award in New York City, announced by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth with Hugh Jackman and Phylicia Rashad in the audience. She has been Grammy and Emmy nominated, climbed the Great Wall of China, done yoga in Bali, swum with turtles in Hawaii, and kissed at Machu Picchu.

Together with her husband, Jeremy, Shalisa runs Entertainment Central Productions, creating shows for Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, Universal Hollywood, and clients including Dolly Parton, J.K. Rowling, and Jimmy Fallon. She has three adult children: Ashley, a doctor in Miami; Julian, an actor and musician in LA; and Jason, a screenwriter and content creator also based in LA. In October 2022, at the height of a career she had spent decades building, Shalisa was diagnosed with Stage 4 terminal endometrial cancer. She was told she had roughly three years to live. She has spent those three years living harder than ever and writing Three Years Left so that none of it would be wasted.