Elena was part of a student journalist team that captured first place in the 2024–2025 Hearst Journalism Digital News/Enterprise Multimedia Team Competition. The team—Elena Cleary, Maggie Knutte, Nathan Gonzalez, Piper Pascarella, Nour Longi, and Faith Lee from University of Illinois—won  a $3,000 scholarship for their documentary piece titled “Tailoring Hope.”  The winners were selected from 60 entries representing 35 schools.

On May 2, 2025, the Spurlock Museum celebrated the Illinois Student Film Festival with 13 films submitted by UIUC students. Elena's documentary "Tailoring Hope" aired third in the film festival. Award winning submissions are still under consideration. 

In October 2024, Elena's documentary team was awarded the 2024 Illinois Broadcasters Association Student Silver Dome Award for Television Photojournalism. Their entry was a short-form cut of their documentary, "The Women of Uman Tok Reframe Menstruation in Sierra Leone".

In March 2024, Elena was interviewed by Fox News reporters in Chicago about her documentary work in Sierra Leone.