Liz Crosson is the chief sustainability, resiliency and innovation officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). She is responsible for developing a district-wide sustainability and resiliency strategy that includes efforts to reduce MWD’s carbon footprint and adapt to immediate climate change impacts. Crosson develops and pursues strategies, programs and policies to advance environmental outcomes that address energy use, conservation, pollution, environmental justice, and climate resilience. She also drives initiatives to foster innovation.
Crosson joined Metropolitan in March 2022 after serving as an advisor to the Los Angeles County Chief Sustainability Office and the county’s 88 cities on pressing sustainability and climate issues. She also served as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s director of infrastructure and was the mayor’s chief policy liaison to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the five bureaus under the city’s Department of Public Works. She also previously served as the city’s deputy chief sustainability officer and the mayor’s first appointed water policy advisor.
From 2010-2015, Crosson was the executive director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper, a nonprofit organization that protects and restores waterways throughout Los Angeles County through Clean Water Act enforcement, advocacy, restoration and community action.
Crosson earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, policy and management from the University of California-Berkeley; a master’s degree in biology from Southern Oregon University; and a juris doctorate from Lewis & Clark Law School, where she graduated with honors, with a certificate in environmental law.
Ensuring safe and reliable drinking water for communities throughout southern California is both a public health and an environmental imperative to me. I am inspired by the notion that the immediate climate impacts we face not only present our greatest challenge but also our greatest opportunity to rethink our relationship with nature and reverse historic injustices to people and the planet.