Elli Blaine ’13 Environmental Consultant
As an independent consultant, she works on a range of grant projects and contract work related to environmental issues – primarily centered on soil health, urban farming, and waste-resource management. She particularly enjoys projects that inspire women, people of color, and youth to be environmental stewards.
As the Assistant Farm Manager with the nonprofit Indy Urban Acres, Elli grows produce on city-owned park land. The organization donates thousands of pounds of locally-grown produce annually to people in need of food assistance to alleviate food insecurity.
For the past three years, Elli has worked with Soil and Water Conservation Districts on a soil health outreach program, to reach underserved populations and enhance understanding and adoption of conservation cropping systems in urban farms.
Elli has an interest in urban lead contamination, and in 2017 helped to coordinate a yearlong collaborative project with IUPUI’s Earth Sciences Department and the Center for Urban Health to engage with community-based organizations around the issue of human health impacts of soil lead contamination. The project funded the employment of youth Environmental Justice fellows to learn how to test soil in their own communities, and work with the university to create a map of the areas that pose a human health risk.
Prior to her current endeavors, Elli worked in the waste-resource management field, in Nicaragua and Boston. One of the highlights of this work was helping to design the first neighborhood-level curbside food waste collection service for the City of Cambridge, MA in 2015.
Elli is an Albright Fellow (Class of 2012) and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College in Environmental Studies.
