BIS Leadership and Offices

Alan F. Estevez serves as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security. As Under Secretary, Mr. Estevez leads the Bureau of Industry and Security, which advances U.S. national security, foreign policy, and economic objectives by ensuring an effective export control and treaty compliance system and promoting U.S. strategic technology leadership.

Mr. Estevez arrived at BIS following an accomplished 36-year career at the Department of Defense, including in two Senate-confirmed leadership positions. His last position at the Department of Defense was Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology & Logistics), where he was responsible for developing, implementing, and managing acquisition, contracting, installation, and logistics programs and policies that increased combat effectiveness, as well as the department’s efficiency and buying power.

Prior to his last government appointment, Mr. Estevez held several key positions within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, including as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness. In this position, he was responsible for providing world class military logistics support to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. He was the first career Federal official to hold this position. Mr. Estevez also served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Material Readiness. Mr. Estevez has been honored numerous times, including three Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medals, the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, two Presidential Rank Awards, and the Service to America Medal (SAMMIE) for National Security.

Most recently, Mr. Estevez served as a national security strategy and logistics executive with Deloitte Consulting, where he worked with clients to innovate and transform their acquisition, contracting, logistics, and supply chain operations.

Mr. Estevez holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Rutgers University and a Master of Science in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University.

Eric J. Beane serves as the Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security. As Deputy Under Secretary, Mr. Beane helps lead the Bureau of Industry and Security’s mission to advance U.S. national security, foreign policy, and economic objectives by ensuring an effective export control and treaty compliance system and promoting U.S. strategic technology leadership. His responsibilities include oversight of the budget process, fiscal management, personnel management services, information technology and security, and various policy and programmatic priorities.

Mr. Beane brings extensive expertise and management experience to BIS. As a career attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2005 to 2011, he advised and defended federal agencies on economic sanctions programs. Following his federal service, Mr. Beane worked in a variety of state government leadership positions. He served as Deputy Legal Counsel and Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Martin O’Malley in Maryland before moving to Rhode Island to serve in then-Governor Gina Raimondo’s Administration. He served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief Operating Officer in the Governor’s Office and then as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Immediately prior to joining BIS, Mr. Beane was Senior Vice President of Unite Us, a mission-driven technology startup focused on the social drivers of health and cross-sector collaboration.

Mr. Beane holds a Bachelor of Arts in public policy from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. He also studied in London and Beijing.

Steven Emme serves as Chief Strategy Officer for the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), where he helps guide the regulations, policies, and strategic planning of the bureau.
 
Mr. Emme initially joined the Biden-Harris Administration as Chief of Staff for BIS and served in that role for nearly three years.  Previously, during the Obama-Biden Administration, he served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Export Administration.  In that position, he focused on the development and implementation of the Export Control Reform initiative, which involved significant changes to the U.S. export control system to help further military interoperability with U.S. allies and partner countries.  He began his BIS career as a member of the Regulatory Policy Division, where he drafted regulations, handled advisory opinions, and spoke on export controls at seminars across the country.
 
In addition to his government service, Mr. Emme was an attorney in the international trade group of a global law firm in Washington, DC and at a global law firm in Houston, Texas.  In those positions, he counseled organizations on compliance with U.S. export controls administered by BIS and the Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, as well as the sanctions regulations administered by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
 
Mr. Emme has a JD from the University of Minnesota Law School and a BS in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He also studied in Russia and Sweden.

Benjamin Haas serves as Chief of Staff of the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce. His previous roles in the Biden-Harris Administration include Principal Senior Advisor to the National Cyber Director and Senior Advisor in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

Prior to joining the Administration, Ben worked on the Biden-Harris Transition, where he managed the national security and foreign policy portfolio for Cabinet and select sub-Cabinet nominations. Earlier, he worked at a human rights non-profit, was an attorney at a law firm, and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.

During his military service, Ben was deployed to Afghanistan twice. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and West Point. Ben is a Council on Foreign Relations term member as well as a member of the Truman National Security Project, and his writing has been published in numerous national outlets. He grew up in the Cleveland area and now lives in Virginia.

Mr. Valentin leads the Financial Management, Budgetary, Human Capital, Acquisitions, Internal Controls, Risk Management, Privacy, and Space Management activities across BIS.

Prior to serving as the BIS Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Director of Administration (DOA), Mr. Valentin served as the BIS Budget Officer, where he ensured BIS was properly resourced to meet its mission. Mr. Valentin also served at the Department of Commerce (DOC), Office of Budget, with oversight responsibilities in support of the U.S. Census Bureau and Departmental Management budget. In this role, Mr. Valentin provided technical guidance and support to senior DOC and bureau leadership, and regularly engaged in all phases of the DOC budget process.

Mr. Valentin has spent his entire career working within the budget and CFO community and has also served at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), where he managed resources and supported recovery efforts during the historically active 2017 hurricane season. Mr. Valentin also served at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in multiple financial management and acquisitions positions.

Mr. Valentin is a native of Chicago, where he attended Loyola University’s Business School, and later graduated Magna cum Laude from the University of Puerto Rico earning his BA in Accounting and Finance.

Thea D. Rozman Kendler was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration at the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), following unanimous confirmation by the United States Senate. In this role, Ms. Kendler leads Export Administration’s highly trained technical professionals in controlling the export of dual-use and military items for national security and foreign policy reasons, analyzing the impact of export controls, and supporting the U.S. defense industrial base. Among other responsibilities, Ms. Kendler chairs the Advisory Committee on Export Policy (ACEP), which resolves interagency policy disputes related to export license applications submitted to BIS. To advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, Ms. Kendler regularly engages with Congress, industry, academia, and other stakeholders on the nature and scope of BIS’s activities and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

Ms. Kendler joined BIS as an experienced export controls, sanctions, and national security attorney. Before joining the Biden-Harris Administration, she was a prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, handling complex investigations and prosecutions affecting U.S. national security and strategic trade controls.  From 2004-2014, Ms. Kendler served in BIS’s counsel’s office, where she provided legal advice to BIS’s Export Administration and Export Enforcement branches, including during the initial years of Export Control Reform. Before joining the federal government, Ms. Kendler practiced in the international trade group of a global law firm.

Ms. Kendler received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. While in law school, she received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant from the U.S. Department of Education to further her Chinese language study.  Ms. Kendler earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, with a concentration in the School of Public and International Affairs and certificates in East Asian Studies and Chinese Culture.  She has studied Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, and lived in Japan as a teenager.  Ms. Kendler’s public service is inspired by gratitude to the United States for enabling her family’s immigration as post-World War II refugees.  Originally from New Jersey, Ms. Kendler now lives in Maryland.

Matthew S. Borman currently serves as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Trade and Technology Security. In this position‚ Mr. Borman is responsible for implementing the Bureau of Industry and Security's (BIS) controls on the export of dual-use and military items for national security‚ nonproliferation, and foreign policy reasons. He is also responsible for BIS’s programs to ensure that industrial resources are available to meet national and economic security requirements‚ including section 232 import investigations and defense industrial base surveys, BIS's implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Additional Protocol to the US-IAEA Agreement. In addition‚ he oversees BIS's Deputy Assistant Secretaries for Strategic Trade and Technology Security. Mr. Borman previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary from 2001-2024, during which time he oversaw sweeping national security controls to counter China’s military-civil fusion strategy, played a key role in developing and implementing US and allied strategic trade restrictions on Russia, led updates to the Export Control Reform initiative, and developed secure trade policies with Cuba, among other achievements.  Prior to his appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary‚ Mr. Borman served as Acting Chief of the Enforcement and Litigation Division of the Office of Chief Counsel for Export Administration. As division chief‚ he was responsible for providing legal advice to the Export Enforcement unit of BIS‚ including the adjudication of administrative enforcement actions.

Mr. Borman entered the Commerce Department in 1992 as an attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel for Export Administration. As an attorney in that office‚ Mr. Borman was responsible for a variety of matters‚ including attempts to revise the Export Administration Act‚ Congressional‚ General Accounting Office and Office of Inspector General investigations and studies‚ Freedom of Information Act requests‚ and export control cooperation with foreign governments. Before entering government service, Mr. Borman represented clients in a variety of trade, regulatory and pro bono matters in private practice.

Mr. Borman received his B.A. in History from Northwestern University‚ his M.A. from Northeastern University‚ and his J.D. from New York University School of Law.

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Matthew S. Axelrod currently serves as the Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, a position to which he was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate in December 2021.

In this capacity, Matt leads a cadre of special agents and analysts dedicated to a singular mission – keeping our country’s most sensitive technologies out of the world’s most dangerous hands. Matt and his team help protect U.S. national security by enforcing the country’s export control laws. They work to prevent exports of sensitive goods and technologies that can be put to malign purposes like weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferation, military and military-intelligence applications, terrorism, and human rights abuses. They also work to ensure that U.S. persons do not participate in unsanctioned foreign boycotts. Matt also co-leads the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, an interagency law enforcement strike force that targets illicit actors, protects supply chains, and prevents critical technology from being acquired by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.

A longtime public servant with deep criminal and national security enforcement experience, Matt previously spent over thirteen years at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Florida and then in a series of high-level jobs at DOJ headquarters. From 2015 to 2017, Matt served as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, one of DOJ’s highest-ranking officials. In that role, he advised the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General on DOJ’s most significant issues, including the most consequential criminal and national security enforcement matters. Matt directly supervised a staff of twenty-five lawyers and helped to oversee DOJ’s workforce of 113,000 employees, including all of its prosecutors and law enforcement agents. In 2021, he rejoined DOJ on Inauguration Day as part of the senior leadership team, serving as Senior Counselor in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.

Matt has also previously served as Special Counsel in the Office of the White House Counsel, where he worked on both domestic and national security matters, and as a partner in an international law firm, where he did internal investigations and white-collar defense work on behalf of companies and individuals. Matt was also one of the founding corps members at City Year, a forerunner and inspiration for the eventual AmeriCorps national service program.

Matt received his B.A. cum laude from Amherst College and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was Notes Editor for the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, Matt clerked for the Honorable Ralph K. Winter, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for the Honorable Janet C. Hall on the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Mr. Kurland is responsible for implementing BIS’s export enforcement program, overseeing a dedicated team of analysts and Special Agents that enforce BIS’s export control and antiboycott missions. BIS Special Agents and analysts are located in 30 domestic locations and ten embassies/consulates around the globe.

Mr. Kurland previously served as BIS’s Deputy Chief of Staff-Policy for the Under Secretary for Industry and Security from 2019-2021, Director of the Office of Enforcement Analysis from 2011-2021, and member of the White House Task Force on Export Control Reform from 2009-2017.

Mr. Kurland also previously served BIS as Acting Chief of Staff for Export Administration from 2009-2011, Director of the Office of Technology Evaluation from 2006-2011, and Director of the Treaty Compliance Division from 2002-2006.

Prior to joining BIS in 1997, he worked as an international trade analyst at Graham & James, LLC.

Mr. Kurland holds an M.A. in Comparative Regional Studies Europe from The American University and a B.A. in International Relations from Syracuse University.

In December 2021, Mr. Kurland was awarded the Presidential Rank Meritorious Executive Award.

Molly S. Braese is the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement at the Bureau of Industry and Security (Department of Commerce).  She is also an Adjunct Professor on Transnational Crime at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. 

Ms. Braese previously served as the Director for Transnational Organized Crime in the Counterterrorism and Transnational Crime Directorate at the National Security Council (NSC).  In that role, Ms. Braese was responsible for formulating and implementing government-wide policies and programs related to transnational organized crime.  Prior to joining the White House, Ms. Braese held various roles in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, as well as at U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration.  

Ms. Braese earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Michigan State University College of Law, and her B.A. in Italian Literature from the University of Connecticut. 

Elizabeth “Liz” Cannon previously served as Senior Corporate Counsel for Global Trade with Microsoft.  In that capacity, she was responsible for monitoring export controls, sanctions, and other international trade and security policy issues.  She also oversaw Microsoft’s Risk Intelligence Group, which conducts due diligence and trade-related investigations.  Liz also brings more than a decade of public service and national security experience from the Department of Justice, including five years as Deputy Chief for Export Controls and Sanctions in the National Security Division. In this role, she supervised all criminal cases involving export control and sanctions violations around the country.

During her service at DOJ, she prosecuted national security cases, including matters involving espionage, economic espionage, mishandling of classified information, cyber offenses, and sanctions and export control violations. She has also spent time in private practice at an international law firm.  She holds a BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia and a JD from New York University School of Law.