Erika Rissi is the Director of the Aspen Leadership Seminars department at the Aspen Institute, where she serves as the primary operational architect, providing the systems design, financial leadership, and operational discipline necessary to sustain and scale Aspen’s values-based leadership programs. Working as a trusted partner to the Executive Director and collaborating closely with the Business Development, Marketing & Communication, and Design & Delivery teams, she translates high-level strategic vision into cohesive, sustainable, and scalable operations.
Erika brings this deep expertise in institutional strategy and operations from her extensive background in the federal science and public sectors. She previously spent more than a decade at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), serving most recently as the Chief Evaluation Officer and Head of Evaluation and Assessment where she specialized in embedding data-driven strategy into tight agency budgets and timelines. As Senior Advisor for Strategy and Evaluation, she also led policy analyses to study and develop evidence-based recommendations for enhancing the NSF’s proposal review policies and processes.
Erika is deeply invested in local civic space and community building. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Island Community Center in Stonington, Maine, where she leverages her background in organizational operations and strategy to help cultivate a vibrant, year-round hub for community connection. An avid vocalist, she is a member of the Washington Douglass Chorale and the Choral Arts Society of Washington—a passion rooted in her time at Yale University, where she earned a B.A. in music.
