2026 Leadership-in-Action Award Recipient
Elizabeth Romano
Principal, National Client ManagerPartner Engineering and Science, Inc.
Award Category: Empowering Systems
Elizabeth Romano, Principal and National Client Manager at Partner Engineering and Science, Inc., was nominated for the NAEM NexGen Leaders Award in the Empowering Systems focus area in recognition of her 23 years of leadership in environmental compliance, sustainability, governance, and risk management. Romano has demonstrated a distinctive ability to build scalable systems that unite diverse stakeholders and deliver lasting environmental and business results, most notably through her work developing and implementing Bank of America’s Governance Program across a portfolio of more than 5,000 banking centers, administrative offices, and data centers. She created a data-driven, risk-based methodology to identify and audit the highest-risk locations, established procedures for reviewing critical regulatory submissions, and helped develop audit procedures, corrective action plans, measurement systems, and continuous improvement processes that contributed to a significant reduction in notices of violation.
Romano also developed Bank of America’s Trip Reduction Ordinance compliance program, creating systems that have maintained compliance for more than a decade while eliminating more than 400,000 single-occupancy vehicle trips and approximately 4.8 million miles of roadway travel, and she helped establish the company’s first methodology for calculating employee commuter carbon emissions for Carbon Disclosure Project reporting. Her combination of technical expertise, business acumen, data analysis, systems thinking, and stakeholder engagement enables her to create practical solutions that strengthen governance and prevent compliance issues before they occur.
Beyond her client work, Romano demonstrates a strong commitment to professional development and the broader EHS&S community through advanced education and specialized training, as well as service with organizations including the Environmental Facilities Management Roundtable, CoreNet Carolinas, and CREW Charlotte, where she helps foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and advancement of the environmental profession.