Bella is a Research Fellow with the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy hosted in American University's School of International Service. She studies different forms of carbon removal technology to mitigate the effects of climate change and global warming, predominantly studying direct air capture and carbon storage technology via mineralization. She looks to complete a PhD in coastal blue carbon systems as means of carbon removal, disaster risk reduction, and community building, largely through conservation and restoration of mangrove forests. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and a Bachelor of Science degree in Society and Environment from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently an Environment and Development masters student at the London School of Economics.

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Currently, Bella is a manager with the Carbon Business Council, a nonprofit trade association dedicated to startups in the carbon management space, working on US federal policy around carbon removal technologies. Bella's helped the association triple its membership in the past year and, with a working group on voluntary carbon markets, recently published a white paper on the topic. She's also a Program Development Assistant for the Mangrove Action Project where she conducts research on mangrove restoration and habitat loss. These focus areas vary from storm impacts to rising sea levels and invasive species. In conjunction with the US Forest Service, Bella and MAP host trainings for Ministries of Environment, academia groups, and local nonprofit organizations in the Latin America and Caribbean region on community-based ecological mangrove restoration. Bella has also worked on projects for MAP in partnership with the UN Development Programme evaluating different forms of community forest management practices in mangrove forests in Myanmar. 

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Bella formerly worked for the United Nations Environment Programme on a Disaster Risk Reduction team specializing in oil and gas management, in partnership with the Government of Norway's Oil for Development Programme. There, she held government trainings for Ministries of Environment and other governmental organizations on carbon capture and storage technologies, oil decommissioning, environmental impact assessments, energy shifts, and bioremediation. She also assisted with a series of legal and policy reports for the Governments of Colombia and Somalia, encompassing resource management, gender roles, biodiversity, and political conflict affecting policy development. 

 

Bella's passion for carbon removal continues in other forms. She is a member of a Carbon Removal Working Group and Carbon Removal Governance Colloquium both based in Washington DC. At UC Berkeley, she completed a Capstone project on Swiss direct air capture technology (Climeworks solid-sorbent systems) and carbon storage in basalt aquifers near the Hellisheidi geothermal plant in Iceland. At Berkeley, Bella designed and taught a class on climate geoengineering technologies and climate policy, including ethics behind stopping climate change and implications with climate refugees.

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She is originally from San Diego, California.