Ruth Greenspan Bell

Bell is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and the co-leader (with Elke Weber of Columbia University) of a program to harvest insights from behavioral social science research to motivate a variety of behavior changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and impact climate challenge. Her previous positions include Senior Fellow and Director of the US Climate Policy Objective at World Resources Institute (WRI); directing International Institutional Development and Environmental Assistance (IIDEA) at Resources for the Future (a program to build more effective systems of environmental protection globally, producing, for example, a highly acclaimed study of the policy process and changes –including the switch of all commercial vehicles from petrol and diesel to CNG -- that led to improvements in air quality in Delhi); Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs; and before that, various domestic management positions in U.S. EPA's Office of General Counsel. Bell publishes extensively about climate change and other environmental issues, addressing a wide range of policy and environmental audiences (Foreign Affairs, Issues in Science and Technology, Environmental Forum, Environmental Law Reporter, Environment, and Harvard International Review among them). Bell is a graduate of UCLA and the School of Law of the University of California at Berkeley; serves on several boards (currently the International Senior Lawyers Project and The Mountain Institute) and is a long-standing member of the Council on Foreign Relations.