David Ellis is Senior Vice President of Outreach & Policy Strategy at the EFI Foundation, founded by former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz to accelerate the transition to a more equitable, low-carbon energy economy. He also serves as a director of the Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that carries on the work of the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI).
In his tenure at EFI Foundation, Ellis has focused on ways to clearly communicate the challenges of climate change. He advises Moniz on partnerships, media opportunities, and business strategy. He also leads the program to brief policymakers on the leading technological pathways to a low-carbon future. The EFI Foundation has briefed more than 30 U.S. Senators and 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have received private briefings. The organization’s leadership has testified before a dozen committees, including multiple appearances before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
As a result of Ellis’s strategic communications expertise, EFI Foundation is the preeminent thought leadership organization on the challenges and opportunities associated with the energy transition. Since its inception as the Energy Futures Initiative in 2017, the group has published more than 40 reports, and launched the Labor Energy Partnership, a joint venture with the American Federation Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Moniz and Foundation principals have published multiple opinion pieces in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, and The Hill, and have appeared as expert voices in major media outlets including CNN, CNBC, NPR, Bloomberg, CBS News, and the BBC. Moniz, an expert communicator on complicated energy and global security issues, has also appeared multiple times on both “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “Real Time with Bill Maher”.
As a founding member of the EFI team, Ellis developed the brand strategy for EFI, which included the organization’s content design and logo, and guided the creation of interactive websites and social media platforms for former Secretary Moniz (@Ernestmoniz) and EFI Foundation (@EFIFoundation).
Successful events include Accelerating the Energy Transition: Infrastructure, Jobs & Equity, an Earth Week 2021 event attended by U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Senators Cory Booker and Joe Manchin, and Representative Kathy Castor, then chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
From 2018 to 2021, EFI produced the annual U.S. Energy & Employment Report (USEER) on a dedicated website: USEnergyJobs.org; a study of Pathways for Deep Decarbonization in California; Advancing the Landscape of Clean Energy Innovation, funded by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy; and Clearing the Air, an influential policy paper on carbon dioxide removal technologies presented at Climate Week NYC.
Prior to becoming part of the launch team, Ellis was senior vice president and chief content officer for CQ Roll Call from 2014 to 2017. He oversaw five departments with 170 full-time employees, including two newsrooms, the research and legal news units, and the product development/user experience team. He reported to the London-based Board of the Economist Group, then CQ Roll Call’s corporate parent, and forged revenue-generating partnerships with Lyons Press, Procter & Gamble, and Google.
Previously, Ellis was an editor-at-large at Bloomberg News in London and Washington for more than a decade, covering business and politics in the United States and Europe. He was also in charge of feature stories from bureaus in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, and later managed a distributed team of reporters in Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore, and South Africa for Bloomberg Markets magazine. Ellis was editor-in-chief of Moneywise, an award-winning U.K. personal finance publication, from 2000 to 2003, and was a frequent commentator on business and personal finance issues on U.K. television and radio.
From 1997 to 2000, Ellis was special sections editor at The Wall Street Journal, producing up to 60 editorial supplements a year. Earlier in his career, he covered presidential campaigns as a reporter at Time and People magazines in New York and Washington. His first news job was an internship at The Economist in London.
Ellis is a member of the National Press Club, the American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE), the National Association of Black Journalists, the Online News Association, and was a board member at the British Society of Magazine Editors. He has both U.S. and U.K. citizenship, and as an avid traveler has visited some 60 countries.
