Lena Munasifi is a Senior Advisor for Special Projects to the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), where she provides guidance and works closely with USPTO leadership to implement programs and initiatives and ensure they are administered in accordance with agency goals and objectives. She also serves as the USPTO representative on two Department of Commerce working groups related to economic recovery and gender policy.
Ms. Munasifi has worked at the USPTO since 2019 in the Office of the General Counsel. During that time she was an attorney on the USPTO’s 2020 Presidential Transition Team, which provided operational and organizational information for the incoming presidential administration. She also was co-lead on the USPTO’s compliance to two Presidential Executive Orders.
Prior to joining the USPTO, Ms. Munasifi was a criminal prosecutor for nine years, both at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Office of Commonwealth’s Attorney for Fairfax County, Virginia. Ms. Munasifi prosecuted thousands of felony cases and was the sole prosecutor in several jury trials. During her time at the U.S. Attorney’s Office she received the FinCEN Director’s Law Enforcement Award for her prosecution of a drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracy.
Ms. Munasifi is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and William and Mary Law School. After law school, Ms. Munasifi clerked for the Honorable Claude M. Hilton, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia.