Elizabeth Sasser has a B.A. and an M.P.P. from Duke University and studied at Peking University in Beijing, China, where she developed a fluency in Mandarin. Sasser served as a policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy through the first term of the Obama Administration. She worked with Administration leadership on strategies to advance the nation’s interests on environmental and energy issues, focusing primarily on bilateral relations with China. Sasser worked with Department of Energy laboratories, private and public sector stakeholders, and Chinese officials to negotiate the terms of U.S.-China clean energy cooperation and then execute on those agreements. In her role with the Department of Energy, Elizabeth brought together a wide range of stakeholders from the public and private sectors to forge cooperative paths forward on the difficult issues of the day.