Ellen Bell has spent the last 12 years working on sustainability in the built environment in Chicago and across the country. Most recently she focused on coordinating Elevate’s High Performance Building Team, providing engineering expertise to the affordable housing sector and guiding a team that helped building advocates and owners access clean energy opportunities while cultivating partnerships . Before that she worked at Environmental Defense Fund concentrating on energy efficiency and advanced energy management, helping to develop opportunities and approaches that supported all buildings as they accessed the benefits of a clean, sustainable and equitable energy economy while promoting policies and goals that support equitable building decarbonization and electrification. Prior to EDF, Ellen worked in industrial sustainability for a McDonald's supplier for two years and spent the five years prior to that as legislative aide to a Chicago alderman.