"Lisa Collis was treating herself to a facial last week when she mentioned to the beautician that she was going to Richmond for the gubernatorial inauguration.

"You know," confided the beautician, unaware her client was just days away from becoming Virginia's first lady, "Mark Warner's wife comes in here to get facials."

Mark R. Warner's wife laughs as she tells the story.

"Nobody knows who I am," Collis says, looking relaxed in a denim jacket and slacks during an interview in her Richmond hotel suite, where management had laid out tiny French cheeses, fruit and cookies with her daughters' names written in chocolate. "I come to the hotel here, and they won't give me the room key half the time."

Such moments of easy anonymity will surely end when Warner is sworn in as the state's 69th governor today.

A reserved woman who cannot fathom why anyone would be interested in her family's personal details, Collis is about to assume a life in which some of her most personal decisions--from not taking her husband's name to where her three daughters go to school--will be scrutinized.

Although Warner may be taking office immediately, the woman he married in 1989 plans a more gradual transition as she moves from Alexandria to Richmond and from a private life to a public role.

She will be a commuter for the first six months of her husband's term, until their daughters finish the school year. Her parents have come from Oregon to stay with their granddaughters.

Many other logistics are up in the air. The family hasn't decided which furniture to bring, which colors to paint the walls or which school the preteen girls will eventually attend in Richmond--which became an issue in the gubernatorial campaign. They won't even spend tonight in the Executive Mansion; instead, they'll stay at the Jefferson Hotel in a three-room suite. Sunday, they plan to mosey over to the five-bedroom mansion, and Warner and Collis will spend the night in a guest room.

The psychological transition is equally incomplete. A disarmingly candid and unpretentious woman of 46, Collis acknowledges insecurity and anxiety over other people's expectations of her as first lady. Even the title causes her to grimace. It sounds too grandiose for the daughter of a Navy aviator and a nurse, who wears no makeup and little jewelry, has only two dresses in a closet full of pantsuits and runs errands in her sweats.

"It's a funny title," says Collis. "Don't you think we should modernize it? Being a casual, not a formal, person, it makes me feel like I'm not dressed right, or standing up straight enough."

Although her husband has been involved in politics all his adult life, Collis has pursued her private passions, first her career at the World Bank and then as a stay-at-home mom. She joined the Peace Corps after graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in biology, but a mission to Upper Volta was canceled. She went to the University of Texas for a master's degree in public health, instead, writing her thesis on nutrition in Guatemala.

She worked on a study of Vietnamese orphans who survived the 1975 Operation Babylift air crash, then was a caseworker for New Jersey migrant workers before taking a job at the World Bank, advising on nutritional and AIDS programs.

Collis quit shortly before the birth of the couple's first daughter, Madison, now 12, who was followed by Gillian, 10, and Eliza, 7. She has volunteered as a classroom worker at her daughters' school, Burgundy Farm School in Fairfax County, where children call their teachers by their first names, something designed to emphasize the collaborative learning process.

One of the realities Collis must deal with now is that private decisions have political ramifications. She and her husband have looked at both private and public schools in the Richmond area. She acknowledges that their choice will make a statement.

"There's some pressure, both internal and external," she says. "Some people will make a judgment on Mark and me based on whether they to go private or public school. And it was a very hard decision to send our first daughter to private school.... The pressure will be one factor in our decision. But the bottom line is we'll decide what is best for the kids."

So far, she has not received any first-hand criticism about not taking her husband's name, the first Virginia governor's wife to do so. Rather, she says, older women approached her during the campaign and applauded her decision to retain the name Collis.

"I guess there might be people who like it, others who don't like it and people who don't care," she says. "But it was important to me."

Collis holds several strikingly different positions than her husband's. More liberal, she opposes the death penalty and a constitutional amendment banning flag burning, both of which he supports. She doesn't expect to stifle her opinions, with one caveat.

"I don't feel I can't disagree with him," she says. "Of course, if it's legislation he proposes, I will be more circumspect. But if anyone in a conversation asks my opinion, my instinct would be to give it."

Collis has not anointed any pet projects yet. She notes that in the family's private CollisWarner Foundation--funded with the fortune Warner has made as a telecommunications entrepreneur--she has supported programs preventing child abuse and advocating computer literacy. She has long been interested in environmental issues and theater and the arts.

"I know I want to make a difference," she says. "Because of my natural insecurities, I'm more anxious about my personal part in this than anything else. I have to figure it out, taking into account the personality I have, who I am and my interests."

Part of Collis's personality is a discomfort with public speaking. Though her dread has eased, she still cannot eat before giving a luncheon speech. But requests for her appearance have begun rolling in, and her appointment book is filling.

"Despite all my anxiety, I know this will be an exciting and challenging time," she says." (Carol Morello, The Washington Post, January 12, 2002)