Elise Bean
Director, Washington Office
From 1985 to 2014, Elise Bean worked as an investigator for Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), including 15 years at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), known for its bipartisan, fact-based investigations into complex issues. Appointed his PSI staff director and chief counsel in 2003, Bean handled investigations, hearings and legislation on matters involving money laundering, offshore tax abuse, corruption, shell companies and corporate misconduct.
After Sen. Levin retired in 2015, Bean helped establish the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy in his honor, a nonprofit whose primary mission is to strengthen bipartisan oversight capacity in Congress and state legislatures. She now serves as co-director of the Levin Center’s Washington, D.C. office. Over the last four years, she has helped train over 200 House and Senate staffers from both parties on investigative techniques. She has also authored a variety of materials related to oversight including a 2018 book on PSI investigations, “Financial Exposure: Carl Levin’s Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse.” She has helped the Levin Center partner with the Federalist Society’s Article 1 Initiative, the Project on Government Oversight, the Lugar Center and others to strengthen Congressional bipartisan oversight.
Bean graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University and earned her J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. She clerked for the Chief Judge of the U.S. Claims Court, and worked for two years at the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2018, Bean was recognized as a leader in tax justice matters by Global Witness. In 2015 and 2016, she was included in the Global Tax 50, a list compiled by the International Tax Review of the year’s top 50 individuals and organizations influencing tax policy and practice. In 2011 and 2013, the Washingtonian magazine named her one of Washington’s 100 most powerful women.
J.D., University of Michigan Law School
B.A., Wesleyan University