Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Thinker and doer; leveraging collaboration and helping connect the dots to drive impact; contributing to change through thought leadership, policy initiatives, and advocacy for climate action, sustainability, resilience, and health in the built environment Full Bio: Elizabeth (Liz) Beardsley brings more than 30 years of professional experience working on environmental and climate issues both as an engineer and lawyer. In her current role, Liz serves as Senior Policy Counsel at the U.S. Green Building Council, a global environmental nonprofit best known for LEED, the world’s most widely used green building rating program. She provides strategic green building law and policy guidance and direction across the federal, state, and local spectrum, and represents the organization in global initiatives. Since joining USGBC in 2014, Liz has represented the organization at the annual UNFCCC COP climate change conferences, and secured observer status for USGBC under the Biodiversity convention. Liz has served on the Boards of the National Association of State Energy Offices (NASEO) and Virginia Energy Efficiency Council (VAEEC), and currently serves on the U.S. General Services Administration High Performance Building Advisory Committee, a committee under FACA. Liz is a sought-after expert and spokesperson for USGBC who speaks regularly at conferences and has been interviewed by dozens of media outlets such as Politico, Future Cities Live, Yale Climate Connection, BBC News: Business Matters, The Aaron Harber Show, ENR, Building Green, and Commercial Property Executive. She’s also an accomplished writer whose work has been published in Governing Magazine, Green Operations, USGBC+, and others. She has authored or co-authored policy papers such as Thinking Big: Evaluating Policy Options and a Proposal to Drive Deep Energy Retrofits (2020), Perspectives on State Legislation Concerning Lead Testing in School Drinking Water (2018) and Perspectives on Implementation and Effectiveness of School Green Cleaning Laws (2015). Member in Good Standing, Massachusetts Bar Association Professional Engineer (Civil)
While a Senior Attorney at GAO, I was responsible for providing legal advice and support to audit teams. Work includes developing positions on legal issues including novel issues and findings of noncompliance, providing policy and strategic advice, conducting research on broad range of legal issues, and reviewing products for legal accuracy. Docket focused on drinking water, wastewater, water resources, children’s environmental health, and environmental justice -- as well as electronic waste, Superfund and federal facilities environmental remediation (DOD).