Who's Who on the Obama Agency-Review Teams

Mich è le A. Flournoy is President and Co-Founder of the Center for a New American Security. Previously, she was a senior adviser at CSIS and a distinguished research professor at NDU. In the Clinton administration, she was dual-hatted as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction and deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. She is on the board of the Institute for Defense Analyses, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Strategy Group, the Executive Board of Women in International Security, and a former member of the Defense Policy Board.

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.