Michelle Lee

Board of Director, alarm.com and Nauto, Inc.

Michelle K. Lee is a public company board member, former chief executive of a $3.4 billion organization, a digital transformation strategist, an MIT-trained engineer, a Silicon Valley veteran experienced in scaling fast-growing companies with disruptive technologies, and one of the foremost intellectual property experts. She has worked at the highest levels in technology, law, business and government and has spent most of her professional career advising some of the country’s most innovative companies.

Ms. Lee served as the chief executive officer (Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 2014-2017. In this role, she led one of the largest intellectual property offices in the world with annual revenues of over $3 billion and 13,000 employees. Ms. Lee was appointed by the President and served his principal advisor on domestic and international intellectual property policy. She is the first woman to serve as Director of the USPTO in our country’s 220+ year history.
Prior to public service, Lee spent the entirety of her career in the Silicon Valley advising high-growth, innovative companies. Ms. Lee served as Deputy General Counsel at Google. She joined the company when it was relatively young, with domestic revenue only and a few products and services, and helped the company grow into a multi-national Fortune 500 corporation with a wide range of offerings. Ms. Lee was responsible for formulating and implementing Google’s patent strategy for all its products and services worldwide, and played a key role in guiding the company through the high-stakes smartphone patent wars.

Ms. Lee’s unique combination of experiences in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. make her a powerful leader and advisor to companies with disruptive technologies and business models, particularly those needing to navigate complex legal and regulatory landscapes. After her term in public service, from 2017-2018, Ms. Lee was appointed the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor at Law at Stanford Law School, where she taught on disruptive technologies (artificial intelligence and driverless cars) and their impact on laws and regulations. Ms. Lee currently serves as a board of director for alarm.com (NASDAQ: ALRM) and Nauto, Inc.

Prior to Google, Ms. Lee was a partner at the law firm Fenwick & West. Ms. Lee has also worked as a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories and the MIT Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory. She holds a B.S. and an M.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, where she wrote her graduate thesis on artificial intelligence at the MIT AI Lab, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

When not avidly contemplating the impact of new technologies on our future, Ms. Lee enjoys spending time skiing, fishing and camping with her family.

 

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