Before becoming Virginia Organizing’s first Climate Equity Policy Fellow in 2022, Elisabeth was a member of the New River Valley chapter for four years. She first moved to Blacksburg in 2002 to study urban planning.

After getting her degree, she volunteered with a political action committee focused on environmental policy during the 2004 election. The group put up billboards in Florida drawing a connection between climate change and increasingly severe hurricanes. After the election, she moved to Miami and lived through three hurricanes over the next year: Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Hurricane Wilma caused power outages throughout the city that lasted two weeks where she lived on the edge of Little Haiti. People in the wealthier areas of the city had their power restored more quickly. That was her first lived experience of climate inequity.

“Living through those storms, and also seeing what Katrina did to Gulf Coast communities of color, especially in New Orleans, made it clear to me that the climate crisis would have a greater effect on marginalized communities.”

Trained as a lawyer, Elisabeth helped push for more affordable housing in Miami and worked on immigration issues in San Diego. In addition to her Master’s in Urban Planning from Virginia Tech, she also has a BA in International Affairs from the University of Mary Washington, a JD from the University of San Diego School of Law, and a PhD in Planning, Governance, and Globalization, also from VT. She has taught classes on energy policy, land use law, environmental law, and community power.

What she likes about Virginia Organizing is “its deep understanding that building power with people in their communities over time changes lives and fights injustice at the root.”