Ellen received her BA in education from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MA in Social Psychology from Goddard College.  Through life’s twists and turns she migrated from psychology to financial planning and investment management and now to climate education.

After over four decades in Miami owning a small investment firm and coaching clients as a Certified Financial Planning practitioner to achieve their retirement goals, in 2019 Ellen sold her business and home.  As an early climate migrant, she relocated to Gainesville, Florida, where she now studies climate science and ecology at the University of Florida.  Retirement allows her to follow her passion as an environmental educator safer from sea level rise and salt water intrusion.  Ellen is here representing The CLEO Institute, Florida’s leading climate literacy and advocacy non-partisan non-profit organization.  CLEO stands for Climate Leadership Engagement Opportunities.

She focuses on teaching lay audiences climate science, the seriousness of the crisis, and the solutions - what must be done to cool our fevered planet.

With 27 years of National Park Service as a volunteer Everglades ranger, Ellen is also a trained presentation leader for the Climate Reality Project and was chair of the Gainesville’s chapter Presentation Committee.  She holds additional climate teaching certificates from Florida’s CLEO Institute, the National Network of Oceanographic and Climate Change Interpretation, Miami’s Catalyst CLEAR, En-Roads Climate Simulation, and the UF/IFAS Master Naturalist programs.

For the past ten years, Ellen created and taught an ongoing course called Climate Conversations 101 for the University of Miami’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute as well as Gainesville’s premier retirement community, Oak Hammock’s Institute for Learners in Retirement. She also has created and led programs for synagogues and churches in Miami and Gainesville, the Miami-Dade Public Library System, the Florida Trail Association; the Alliance of Remarkable Women; and private Zoom programs for interested citizens’ personal cohorts.

She now turns her attention to training other presenters, developing curriculum to incorporate science, social science, communication skills, and presentation skills.  Her goal is to amplify the climate conversation like a rock tossed into a lake.