Lea-Ann Bigelow
Office Federal Financial Management, Transparency and Grants
2022 fellow
Ms. Bigelow is a versatile operations executive with a unique track record of innovation, strategy and policy development and execution, coalition building and results delivery across the Federal, private and non-profit sectors.
As Director of Interagency Collaboration at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), she led CBP’s partnerships with over 50 federal agencies and global entities with equities in cross-border trade towards optimization and impact in trade policy, trade-facilitating technology, and trade security and enforcement. In this role, she oversaw the Border Interagency Executive Council, the decision-making body charged with enhancing coordination across federal agencies with border responsibilities to measurably improve supply chain processes and the identification of illicit and high risk shipments. Ms. Bigelow also managed interagency technology enhancements to the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), also known as the U.S. Single Window, the data exchange and warehouse through which all imports to and exports from the U.S. are processed.
Ms. Bigelow’s 17 years of public sector leadership crosses two Cabinet departments (Department of Homeland Security and Department of Commerce (DOC)); and two independent agencies (Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the National Gallery of Art.)
Prior to joining CBP, Ms. Bigelow served as Deputy Director, Performance Strategy and Systems, DOC where she led performance, strategic planning, budget integration, evaluation and enterprise risk mandates for the Office of the Secretary and across all 12 Commerce bureaus. In 2016, Ms. Bigelow was awarded the Commerce Gold Medal for distinguished contributions to Organizational Development.
Before entering public service, Ms. Bigelow was an investment banker and strategy consultant, specializing in international M&A, venture capital and project finance. Ms. Bigelow holds a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
As a WHLDP fellow, Ms. Bigelow is assigned to the Office of Federal Financial Management, where she will work to develop and implement policy on data quality, reporting standards and spending transparency to support effective delivery of critical government services.