Lisa Ellman has held a variety of positions at top levels of the Executive branch at the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice. Nearly eight years ago, she began working for her former law professor, Barack Obama. In a series of presidential appointments, Lisa led work on high-priority policy initiatives for the Obama Administration on issues spanning from open and transparent government to domestic use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (“UAS”), more commonly known as “drones.” Most recently, she led the DOJ’s effort to develop policy that would govern the use of drones in the United States. Lisa is now in private public policy practice in the Washington, DC office of McKenna Long & Aldridge, where she chairs the firm’s UAS Practice Group. In this role she continues to work on these same issues, using her experience in the federal government to help bridge the sizable knowledge gap between government policymaking and business innovation. In November 2014, Lisa gave a TEDx talk about "polivation" – a new approach to balancing the needs of innovators and policymakers that will enable society to make good use of new technologies, including commercial and private UAS, in a way that wins the public's trust and serves its interests.