The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) initiated a Coastal Resilience Collaborative that brought together dozens of partner organizations representing numerous sectors, aimed at improving the resilience of human and natural coastal communities while supporting the coastal economy. Elizabeth was appointed by the NJDEP to head the Outreach Committee (of the Coastal Resilience Collaborative), which had a goal to build the capacity of local stakeholders and partners to implement more coastal resilience projects.

The Outreach Committee used a consensus-based process to coordinate and organize the 2-day NJDEP-sponsored conference, Coastal Resilience for People and Nature, in order to ensure input from all partner organizations in the committee. In addition to inviting numerous speakers and panelists, the committee also organized breakout groups to get feedback around challenges and solutions to adoption of nature-based solutions.
The conference took place in December 2017 and was attended by almost 200 people representing a diverse mix of organizations, and numerous attendees commented that they enjoyed the engaging sessions and the conversations between sessions. Further, the Outreach Committee used the results of the workgroups to inform their next round of projects.