Elizabeth Biser is the President of Biser Strategies LLC, an environmental policy consulting firm.
Governor Roy Cooper appointed Biser to serve as Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality in June of 2021, where she served until September 2024. She was the first woman confirmed to serve as DEQ Secretary.
In August of 2023, she was elected by her peers to serve as President of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), the national nonprofit, nonpartisan association of state and territorial environmental agency leaders
As DEQ Secretary, she oversaw the state agency whose mission is to protect North Carolina’s environment and natural resources. The organization has over 1600 employees located in offices from the mountains to the coast and administers regulatory and public assistance programs aimed at protecting the quality of North Carolina’s air, water, and land, its coastal resources and fisheries, and the public’s health
Under Elizabeth’s leadership, DEQ developed the Action Strategy for PFAS and took proactive steps to prepare public water systems for federal drinking water limits. She has led DEQ’s efforts to propose state groundwater and surface water standards to reduce the amount of PFAS entering the environment and ensure residents are not paying the entire cost of cleaning up PFAS contamination
Additionally, she has been an outspoken advocate of ensuring the entire lifecycle of PFAS is addressed, recently petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency to list four PFAS compounds as Hazardous Air Pollutants
She successfully oversaw the implementation of over $6.5 billion in state and federal investments to improve water and sewer infrastructure in communities throughout the state. She led the effort to ensure that the historic funding helped the communities that needed it the most, which resulted in 2000 homes being connected to public water for the first time
Previously, she served as the Vice President of Policy & Public Affairs at The Recycling Partnership and the Government Relations & Policy Advisor of Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard, LLP. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
