Elana is an Associate at McKinsey & Co. and an adjunct fellow with New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative. Prior to that she served in the Obama Administration, first as Director of Economic Opportunity for the National Broadband Plan at the FCC and then as an Innovation Advisor in Secretary Clinton's office at the Department of State. There she worked on a range of issues at the intersection of technology and diplomacy and development including mobile banking, internet freedom and the development of public-private partnerships to support  local programmers/tech entrepreneurs in East Africa.

She has been a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Team’s Technology, Innovation and Government Reform policy group and a researcher for Google.org on media tools that facilitate access to information for economic, educational and civic opportunity. While completing a joint MBA and MPA at Harvard Business School and Kennedy School of Government, Elana was President of the Social Enterprise Club and conducted a field study for the White House Office of Social Innovation. Prior to graduate school, she was part of the start-up team of Campus Progress, the youth division of Center for American Progress, a nationally recognized think tank and founding editor of their online magazine. As a freelance journalist on political and cultural topics, Elana’s work has appeared in The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Times, The Nation, Bust, Nylon and Time Out New York amongst others.