Amy Pitelka

Amy Pitelka

Working with teams that are working towards a better future, locally or globally.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, I started my career practicing international private equity mergers and acquisitions law at Kirkland & Ellis in London. From there I joined Google to negotiate deals and advise product teams, then moved to Dropbox and combined my corporate, commercial, and product practices.

In January of 2016, I joined the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) at the White House and became their first practicing tech lawyer. At USDS I learned how to delve into discrete new highly regulated fields of law and developing policy areas, in order to provide confident advice in hours. In my last month at USDS, I served as the Acting Deputy Administrator, which gave me a new perspective on running a large and complex organization.

After founding my firm, Barker Pitelka PLLC, I was able to help driven teams navigate complex legal systems and structures — from enabling de-identified medical data sharing across research institutions to facilitate the application of AI to medical science, to the relatively straightforward work of establishing and growing a technology company. In 2020-2021, I focused back on government benefits and the infrastructure supporting services delivery in the Biden-Harris Transition and following administration. Most recently, I gained insight into the full spectrum of issues facing startup legal teams by joining Level, an employee benefits fintech, as its first Head of Legal and growing an exceptional team of attorneys.


Barker Pitelka LLC

Managing Partner

Based in Seattle, with a mission of empowering organizations to leverage law and policy as key tools for unlocking accelerated growth.  Principally advising start-ups and social good organizations across the United States.


Deer Harbor Group

Founder

Advising teams as they implement challenging ideas in complex systems and structures, from understanding applicable rules and regulations governing a project, to generating creative program solutions, and bringing along key institutional and external stakeholders. More


Level

Head of Legal

As Level’s first Head of Legal, grew the legal and compliance departments quickly, establishing legal processes and procedures on the way. Our team navigated ERISA, HIPAA, payments, insurance, international privacy, money laundering, commercial, IP, employment, and many other legal issues, and I was ultimately able to also oversee our people function. More


Center for Applied AI at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Head of Legal, Nightingale Open Science

Navigated the team through the legal complexities of inter-university health data sharing, working closely with The University of Chicago counsel’s office. Designing project templates and bringing internal and external stakeholders along in the legal construct design and implementation. More

Project Lead, Computational Medicine Legal Accelerator

Designed and led a project to accelerate the inter-institutional health data sharing processes to expedite research and breakthroughs in diagnosis and patient care. More


U.S. Digital Service at The White House

Consultant

Focusing on interagency data sharing and human-centered benefits delivery.

OMB Associate General Counsel, and Acting Deputy Administrator

First lawyer hired into the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), lead counsel for USDS. Worked with digital policy teams across the Executive Office of the President and Federal agencies to identify, promote, and execute on key opportunities to modernize digital technology in the Federal government.

Quickly learned entirely new fields of law to support more than a dozen teams working in highly regulated areas, while building a legal organization in USDS from the ground up, developing appropriate internal policies, agreement templates, knowledge management components, and systematized legal analyses.


Google and Dropbox

Product, Commercial, and Corporate Counsel

Google

Product counsel, worked principally with ads and travel product teams, as well as Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) teams.

Commercial counsel, negotiated significant Google ads publisher partner deals, cable t.v. content agreements for Google Fiber, hardware agreements, and others.

Dropbox

Product counsel for Dropbox for Business, Dropbox for Enterprise, developer tools (APIs), payments, and Mailbox.  Worked with product and engineering leadership, counseling on legal implications of the technical detail product infrastructure and implementation, including the strategic vision of the team and anticipated user interaction with potential points of confusion.  Privacy lead for the product team.

Commercial counsel, negotiated and drafted a full spectrum of agreements, including foundational infrastructure and Dropbox for Enterprise deals, international reseller agreements, and partnership deals.  

Corporate counsel, led Dropbox’s largest acquisition, smaller corporate deals, and a corporate restructuring.

International lead responsible for Dropbox Australia and Israel offices.


Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Corporate Associate 

In London and San Francisco, represented private equity clients in their global interests, negotiating and implementing cross-border transactions with a focus on mergers and aquisitions.

 

 


Harvard Law School

J.D.