Biography
The Hon. Michelle K. Lee is founder and CEO of Obsidian Strategies. Obsidian Strategies (“Architects for AI-Driven Strategies”) advises companies on identifying and implementing their most impactful AI opportunities and provides education to boards and companies on AI and AI governance. She is also an advisor to Anthropic, and currently serves on the boards of MassMutual (Fortune 100), Strive Health and MIT, and previously Unity Technologies (NYSE: U), alarm.com (NASD: ALRM) and others.
Before Obsidian, Ms. Lee held the position of senior executive and Vice President (AI) at Amazon Web Services, where she ran key parts of their global AI business including the Machine Learning Solutions and Computer Vision businesses. Ms. Lee was also the lead business executive in charge of AWS’ responsible AI efforts.
Prior to Amazon, Ms. Lee served as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In this role, she served as the CEO of the USPTO and principal advisor to the President of the United States through the Secretary of Commerce on intellectual property policy. Ms. Lee is the first woman to hold this position in our country’s history.
From 2017 to 2018, Ms. Lee held the appointment as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School where she taught on disruptive technologies (artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles) and their impact on policies and regulations.
Earlier, Ms. Lee served as an early executive at Google, a partner at Fenwick & West and a researcher at the MIT AI and Hewlett-Packard Research Labs. Ms. Lee holds a B.S. and an M.S. from MIT in electrical engineering and computer science and a J.D. from Stanford Law.
Ms. Lee frequently speaks on the topics of AI, AI governance, digital transformation, and intellectual property, including at the Consumer Electronics Show, South-By-Southwest (twice as a featured speaker), Stanford Directors’ College (past 9 years), the National Association of Corporate Directors (multiple times including at their Annual Summit in 2023), the Corporate Director Academy, Silicon Valley Directors Exchange (multiple times) and to countless audiences globally. Ms. Lee has testified before Congress about 10 times in her various areas of expertise including intellectual property, technology and policy. She also serves as a presidentially-appointed Special Advisor on the American Bar Association’s AI Task Force, and is listed in the National Association of Corporate Directors 2023 list of Top 100 Directors and in Women, Inc.’s Most Influential Woman Board Directors in 2025. To her boards, Ms. Lee brings multi-disciplinary perspectives from the top levels of technology, business, law and government.
