
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.

Dr. H. Christopher Frey is the Associate Dean for Research and Infrastructure of the College of Engineering, and the Glenn E. and Phyllis J. Futrell Distinguished University Professor of environmental engineering in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, at North Carolina State University. His research focuses on measurement and modeling of air pollution emissions and exposure, with emphasis on transportation and on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis.
Between February 1, 2021 and September 30, 2024, Dr. Frey served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initially as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science Policy and subsequently, after Senate confirmation, as Assistant Administrator for Research and Development. He led the EPA Office of Research and Development in developing and translating science to inform decisions within the Agency and of Agency partners including states, Tribes, local and territorial governments, and communities. He also served as the Agency’s Science Advisor and co-chair of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on Environment. He is a past chair of the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and has had other advisory roles with the National Research Council, World Health Organization, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and EPA. Dr. Frey is a Fellow of the Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA) and of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) and was President of SRA in 2006.

Joe DeCarolis is a Professor and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (CCEE) at NC State. He and his students focus on conducting rigorous, transparent, and impartial analysis to support the development sustainable energy systems. From 2022 to 2025, he served as Administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, one of the thirteen principal statistical agencies within the U.S. federal government. Under his leadership, EIA prioritized transparency and accessibility of its data and analytic products and embarked on a bold new effort to revamp its long-term modeling program. Before joining the CCEE faculty, Dr. DeCarolis was an environmental scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Research and Development. He received his PhD in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004.


