Dr Lesher received her PhD from the University of Kentucky in Experimental Nuclear Physics followed by Postdoctoral Fellowship positions at the Instituut voor Kern-en Str Stralingsfysica, University of Leuven, Belgium, the University of Richmond, and N-Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. In 2009 she joined the Physics Department at University of Wisconsin - La Crosse (UWL) where for three years she also served as Chair of the Department. While at UWL Dr. Lesher was also the McNair Scholars Program Director from 2021 - 2024. Other professional appointments include Guest Professor in the Physics Department at the University of Notre Dame (since 2010) and a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University (2019-2020). In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

In Jul 2024, Dr. Lesher joined the Department of Physics at North Carolina A&T State University as Chair.