Agency Review Co-Chairs
Melody Barnes is Co-chair of the Agency Review Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. She most recently served as the Senior Domestic Policy Advisor to the Obama for America campaign. Prior to joining the campaign, Ms. Barnes served as the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress, Chief Counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a Principal at The Raben Group, LLC. Her experience also includes an appointment as Director of Legislative Affairs to the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ms. Barnes began her career as an attorney with Shearman & Sterling.
Lisa Brown is Co-chair of the Agency Review Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. She is on leave from the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy where she is the Executive Director. Lisa served as Counsel to Vice President Gore, with a broad legal and policy portfolio that included serving on the Executive Board of the President’s Committee for Employment of People with Disabilities. Before that, she worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, was a Partner at the D.C. law firm of Shea & Gardner (now Goodwin Procter), and clerked on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for the Honorable John C. Godbold.
Don Gips is on the Advisory Board of the Obama-Biden Transition Project and is Co-chair of the Agency Review Working Group. He is on leave from his role as Group Vice President of Global Corporate Development at Level 3 Communications, where he leads merger and acquisition efforts and is the Chief Strategy Officer. Prior to joining Level 3, Mr. Gips served in the White House as Chief Domestic Policy Advisor to Vice President Gore. Previously, Mr. Gips was Chief of the International Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission where he was responsible for the WTO negotiations and all spectrum policy. Mr. Gips also helped launch the Americorps Program at the Corporation for National Service. Before entering government, he was an Executive Manager at McKinsey & Company.
Working Group Members
Seth Harris is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the labor, education, and transportation agencies. He is a Professor and the Director of Labor & Employment Law Programs at New York Law School. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Life Without Limits Project of the United Cerebral Palsy Association and a member of the National Advisory Commission on Workplace Flexibility. He served as the Chair of Obama for America’s Labor, Employment, and Workplace Policy Committee and a Co-Chair of its Disability Policy Committee. During the Clinton Administration, he served as Counselor to the Secretary of Labor and Acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy, among other policy-advising positions. Before joining the administration, he was a law clerk to Judge William Canby of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Gene Carter of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Review of Law & Social Change at the New York University School of Law.
David J. Hayes is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the energy and natural resources agencies. He is former Global Chair of the Environment, Land and Resources Department at Latham & Watkins, an international law firm. He is a Senior Fellow at the World Wildlife Fund, advising the President of WWF on climate change matters, and he is a Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, specializing on energy matters. Mr. Hayes is the Vice-Chairman of the national conservation group, American Rivers, and he is the former Chairman of the Board of the Environmental Law Institute. Mr. Hayes was the Deputy Secretary of the Interior during the Clinton Administration. During the 2007-2008 academic year, Hayes was a Consulting Professor at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Reed Hundt, is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the international trade and economics agencies. He is a member of various boards of directors, a part-time senior adviser to McKinsey & Company, a strategic consulting firm, and an adviser to a number of firms. He served as the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997. Since that date, he has taught for a number of years at Yale College, Yale Law School, and the Yale School of Management, and Yale University Press has published two books written by him, You Say You Want A Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics and In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship.
Sally Katzen is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the Executive Office of the President and government operations agencies. She is a Lecturer at Michigan Law School and teaches American Government at the Michigan in Washington Program. She has also taught at George Mason, Pennsylvania and Georgetown law schools as well as at Smith College and Johns Hopkins University. From 1993-2001, she served as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), then Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, and then OMB’s Deputy Director for Management. She has served on National Academies of Science panels and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Before 1993, she was a partner at then Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. She clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the District of Columbia Circuit.
Tom Perez is as a member of the Obama Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the justice, health and human services, veterans affairs, and housing and urban development agencies. He is Secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation under Governor Martin O’Malley. He worked in a variety of civil rights positions at the Department of Justice, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under Attorney General Janet Reno. He also served as Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Donna Shalala, and as Special Counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy. From 2001 until 2007, he was Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law, and is an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington School of Public Health.
Sarah Sewall is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the national security agencies. She is on part-time leave from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she teaches and is Faculty Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Her research focuses on U.S. national security strategy, civil-military relations, counterinsurgency, terrorism and mass atrocity. Sewall served as the first U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance (1993-1996). She previously served for six years as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.
Louisa Terrell is a Working Group member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Team. Louisa is on leave from her role as Senior Director at Yahoo!’s public policy office in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining Yahoo! Louisa was Deputy Chief of Staff for Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Previously, Louisa was counsel for Senator Biden on his Senate Judiciary Committee staff where she handled criminal sentencing, juvenile justice, child protection, immigration policy and women’s issues, among other areas and before that worked in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.
Ray Rivera is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group. He was most recently State Director for the Obama-Biden Campaign in Colorado. He was also the State Director for the Colorado Caucus and served as Northeast Field Desk out of Chicago headquarters early in the campaign. Prior to the Obama Campaign, Ray was a Political Director for AFSCME, public employee’s labor union and a union organizer. Ray was born in Albuquerque, NM and graduated with a BA from the University of New Mexico in 2001.
Michael Warren is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group helping to oversee the international trade and economics agencies. He is on partial leave from his role as Chief Operating Officer of Stonebridge International LLC., where he is a member of the firm’s Management Committee. Prior to joining Stonebridge, Warren led corporate development at Horne Engineering Services and served as President of Appfluent Technologies. He also serves as Chairman of Ironbridge Systems. He is on the Board of Directors of the District of Columbia Retirement Board, Catalist, the DC Minority Business Enterprise Center Advisory Board, Southeastern University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, Civitas, and the National Child Research Center. Warren previously worked at McKinsey & Company, both as a strategic consultant in the technology and financial institutions industries and as a fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute, advising corporate leaders in the U.S. and Asian semiconductor industries. He served within the White House as Executive Director of the President’s National Economic Council.
Tom Wheeler is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group responsible for the science, technology, space and arts agencies. He has taken a leave of absence from Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm working with early stage technology companies, where he is a Managing Director. For three decades, Wheeler has worked at the forefront of technology, both as an entrepreneur and as a policy specialist. He has been the CEO of the National Cable Television Association and the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, as well as the founder or co-founder of multiple new technology companies. Wheeler is the author of two books: Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails and Leadership Lessons from the Civil War.
Jon Wilkins is a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Agency Review Working Group. He has taken a partial leave of absence from McKinsey & Company, where he is a partner in the Washington, DC office. Jon first joined McKinsey in 1996. He then worked at the Federal Communications Commission from 1998-1999 before re-joining McKinsey in 1999. He was Managing Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
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