Under New Leadership, State Energy & Environmental Impact Center Will Continue Working to Promote Climate, Clean Energy and Environmental Laws and Policies
NYU School of Law announces new leadership for State Impact Center: Bethany Davis Noll named Executive Director; Jessica Bell taking on new role as Deputy Director.
Washington, D.C. — The State Energy & Environmental Impact Center will be continuing its work on clean energy, climate and environmental issues during the Biden administration, under a talented and experienced new leadership team. NYU School of Law today announced the appointment of Bethany Davis Noll as the Center’s Executive Director, effective January 22. Jessica Bell will be the Center’s Deputy Director.
“Bethany and Jessica are perfect picks to lead the State Impact Center,” said Richard Revesz, AnBryce Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and Chair of the State Impact Center’s Advisory Council. “Their legal expertise and experience will be invaluable as the Center continues to advance its core goals of promoting clean energy, climate, and environmental laws and policies. Under the inspired leadership of David J. Hayes and Elizabeth Klein, the Center has played an indispensable role in the successful effort to strike down numerous policies of the Trump Administration that would have caused great harm to the health of the American people and to the environment. I’m confident that the Center will continue to have a very bright future in Bethany’s and Jessica’s hands.”
Davis Noll and Bell take the helm of the State Impact Center after the previous Executive Director, David J. Hayes, was tapped to join the Biden White House as Special Assistant to the President for Climate Policy. The Biden transition on Monday announced plans to nominate the State Impact Center’s previous Deputy Director, Elizabeth Klein, as Deputy Secretary of the Interior. Hayes and Klein helped launch the State Impact Center in 2017, and expanded its capacity and influence to help hold the line against the Trump administration’s environmental deregulatory agenda.
Bethany Davis Noll is an expert in administrative and environmental law and an experienced litigator. She also serves as an adjunct professor at NYU Law and co-chairs the Environmental Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She will be coming to the Center from the Institute for Policy Integrity, where she led amicus efforts in cases challenging the Trump administration’s rollbacks of environmental and other rules as litigation director. She also ran Policy Integrity’s “Roundup: Trump-Era Agency Policy in the Courts.”
Bethany previously served as Assistant Solicitor General in the New York State Attorney General’s Office, where she filed briefs in major environmental cases in the Supreme Court and earned the Louis J. Lefkowitz Memorial Award for her work. She received a J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law School and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Barnard College.
Jessica Bell previously served as the clean energy attorney at the State Impact Center, focusing on energy law issues at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and on state energy policy matters.
Prior to joining the Center, she was an associate at Spiegel & McDiarmid LLP, where she advocated for municipal utilities before state and federal agencies and courts. Before entering private practice, she was an honors fellow in the Office of General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Andrew M. Mead of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Jessica graduated from Wellesley College cum laude with a B.A in chemistry and earned a J.D. with academic honors from the Columbia University School of Law.
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About the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center:
The State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan academic center at NYU School of Law. The Center is dedicated to working towards a healthy and safe environment, guided by inclusive and equitable principles. The Center studies and supports the work of state attorneys general (AGs) in defending, enforcing, and promoting strong laws and policies in the areas of climate, environmental justice, environmental protection, and clean energy.