M.L.A. Guttman Scholar, McHarg Prize for Excellence in Contemporary Ecological Design, University of Pennsylvania (2002)
M.P.P. Master of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Universiy (1990)
B.S. with University Honors, Carnegie Melon University (1988)
Ellen is a Registered Landscape Architect, an Associate Professor of Practice in Landscape Architecture, and the executive director of PennPraxis, the non-profit practice arm of Penn’s graduate school of design and planning. Ellen focuses on design for climate action at many scales, particularly the kinds of challenges that involve community collaboration, policy design, and physical design of public space and infrastructure that advances community life, livelihoods, and environmental quality.
She has led or collaborated on a number of high profile climate action projects in recent years, including the Camden Coastal Resilience Plan (2025), the Dakar Greenbelt Design Prospectus (2025), the Farm of the Future, a large scale green infrastructure demonstration for agricultural regions in Pennsylvania with Penn Veterinary School (ongoing), the Pittsburgh Strategic Water Plan (2023), site design and visualization for the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission’s long-term comprehensive plan, Future LV (2019), design of a 14-mile section of the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor at Allentown (2019), a regional water infrastructure proposal for the Regional Plan Association of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut’s Fourth Regional Plan (2018), and Hunts Point Lifelines, one of the 6 winning projects in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rebuild by Design competition (2014). The PennDesign / OLIN team was recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation as one of 4 “global resiliency innovators” for its culture-shifting resilience proposal for Hunts Point. Ellen’s work with young designers on the D&L National Heritage Corridor project received a National Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2020, and her team’s work for the Fourth Regional Plan won an AIA Award (2019).
In 2020, Ellen founded Design to Thrive, a free youth program that develops skills for climate action, design, advocacy and life that has provided intensive summer career experiences for over 550 youth in New York and Philadelphia since 2020. Her team’s work with West Philadelphia High School students was awarded a Projects for Progress Award (2022).
Prior to becoming the director of PennPraxis, Ellen founded and led RANGE, a landscape and policy design practice in Brooklyn (2015 to 2018). She has been teaching in Penn’s graduate school of design and planning since 2011. Prior to that, Ellen was an associate partner at James Corner Field Operations in New York, where she helped build an international landscape architecture and urban design practice. Over nine years at Field Operations, she developed designs for a wide range of projects involving ecological reclamation, complex water dynamics, and community development and including Fresh Kills Park, Lake Ontario Park in Toronto (awarded the National Honour Award by the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects in 2009, and Muscota Marsh stormwater infrastructure with eDesign which earned the Award for Excellence in Design from the City of New York for infrastructure design in 2013. Prior to becoming a landscape architect, Ellen earned a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard and worked for 9 years in public policy and community development
