Common Acres Advisory works with a network of trusted technical experts including soil scientists, financial modelers, and government relations experts at the local, state and federal levels. Clients get a single point of contact and a team assembled for what each project requires.

Aliza Drewes founded Common Acres Advisory from a career dedicated to policy advising on clean energy and agriculture in the United States. 

At USDA’s Rural Utilities Service, Drewes advised on $40 billion of rural clean energy investments, helping lower electricity rates for 75% of rural Americans. She used that platform to establish, for the first time at the federal level, how clean energy investments can deliver tangible economic benefits to farmers and ranchers, by launching the Farmer Benefit Plan guidance as part of the renewable energy programs. She also launched the USDA-DOE Working Group on Farmland and Renewable Energy, coordinating 10 federal offices and three national labs on research gaps, policy design, and governance models that rural communities need to have a lasting role in how project benefits are managed.

Before USDA, Aliza founded RIPE (Rural Investment to Protect our Environment), a bipartisan nonprofit that secured $80 million to pilot a direct farmer payment model incentivizing climate-smart agriculture across four states — with documented bipartisan support. The RIPE framework she designed delivers $100/acre to farmers and demonstrated a 4:1 public return on investment. Prior to that, Aliza spent six years at the National Governors Association directing energy and water policy programming for senior advisors across 44 governors’ offices, in both parties. Her prior work includes serving at Community Alliance with Family Farmers, representing family farms’ economic, political and environmental interests. She is seasoned in finding common ground across diverse perspectives and cultivating solutions that are politically effective.

Drewes holds an Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs with a certificate in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, and a BA from Rutgers University. She is based in the Washington, D.C., metro area with her family and Bruno the dog, who all enjoy vsits to the farmers market and family farms on the weekends.