Christine Gelles leaves EM this month for a position in the private sector.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Christine Gelles, an EM executive whose work contributed to a range of waste management accomplishments over more than 20 years at DOE, departs this month for a position in the private sector. Gelles will become corporate vice president and chief strategy officer at the energy and environmental consulting firm Longenecker and Associates.

   The job shift takes Gelles, a Pennsylvania native, away from DOE for the first time since she joined the Department in 1993 as a budget analyst in the Office of Chief Financial Officer.   

   Working her way up over two decades, most recently she has served as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Waste Management, a post whose portfolio includes policy and resources for EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Los Alamos and Idaho cleanup sites, and small sites under the EM umbrella.

   With a bachelor’s degree in English from Mount St. Mary’s College, Gelles joined DOE as the Department actively recruited liberal arts majors to work alongside scientists and engineers, translating their technical work into products that could be more easily communicated to stakeholders and the public.

   "I just enjoyed learning things and acquiring as much expertise as I could,” Gelles recalled. “We didn’t have the pervasive World Wide Web at the time. We didn’t even have email when I joined. I think we were just starting to get it. We certainly didn’t have (Microsoft) Office. Our secretaries typed on carbon paper, for real.”

   In 1999, she joined the Rocky Flats Project Office within EM in a program analyst job she said remains her most rewarding experience. 

   “Supporting the closure of Rocky Flats still stands out as the absolute highlight,” she said. “We were doing something innovative in contract space. We were doing something innovative in project management space. It was a wonderful example of a partnership between headquarters and the field. I was one on a team of people who were solving first-of-a-kind problems together.”

   Gelles said leaving EM is difficult.

   “It’s the hardest decision I ever had to make,” she said. “I appreciate the opportunities I've had throughout the years to work with amazing people who are highly skilled and committed to the program's progress. I have a tremendous love and loyalty for this program. I think what we do is so important.”