Suzi Ruhl

B. Suzi Ruhl, JD, MPH, is a Senior Research Scientist at Elevate Policy Lab and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale Child Study Center. Ms. Ruhl joins Elevate from her previous position, Senior Counsel for the US EPA Office of Environmental Justice, where she served as Co-Chair of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Committee of the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJIWG), Co-Chair of the Rural Communities Committee of the EJIWG, and as Chair of the Subcommittee on Place Based Efforts for the EJIWG. Her work has focused on advancing triple bottom line (i.e. environmental, health and economic) justice by integrating environmental justice in agency decision-making, supporting community-based action, and fostering administration wide action that promotes healthy, equitable, resilient, and sustainable communities for overburdened and underserved populations. Ms. Ruhl co-founded Brownfields to Healthfields (B2H), a community driven, multi-stakeholder approach to transform contaminated properties into community spaces that meet essential needs (e.g. health care, food security, physical activity). She also co-produced an analytical methodology for advancing consideration of environmental justice, including the human environment, in environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. See Promising Practices for EJ Methodologies in NEPA Reviews.

Suzi brings her expertise on triple bottom line and community driven approaches to the Elevate team with a focus on centering environmental justice in the lab’s mission to promoting social and economic mobility for families living in poverty.

In addition to her law degree, Ms. Ruhl has a master’s degree in Public Health (Epidemiology). She is admitted to the bars of the Northern District of Florida and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.