Melissa Elkinton is Vice President of Development and a Managing Member at Belltown Power, where she brings over 20 years of experience in wind and solar energy and leads the development of Belltown’s wind portfolio.

Before joining Belltown in 2023, Melissa led energy, GIS, and engineering for wind and solar projects at Avangrid Renewables. Prior to that, she spent more than a decade at DNV, where she led teams responsible for wind and solar resource assessment and energy modeling, supporting the project financing of over 16 GW of wind capacity.

Melissa received the AWEA Technical Achievement Award in 2016 and served as the first woman to chair AWEA’s Wind Resource & Project Energy Assessment Conference (now ACP’s PEAK Conference). She holds a BS from Boise State University and an MS from UMass Amherst, both in Mechanical Engineering.

A 2006 Rudd Mayer Fellow and longtime supporter of WRISE, Melissa has volunteered as a mentor, career coach, panelist, and local chapter event organizer. She is an ardent advocate for mentoring, seeing it as one of the most effective ways to support women and gender-diverse professionals in clean energy.

Based in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two sons, Melissa loves reading, outdoor adventures, and playing basketball.