Advisory Board Member

Maria A. Pallante
President and Chief Executive Officer, Association of American Publishers;
Former Register of Copyrights and Director, U.S. Copyright Office.

Maria A. Pallante is the President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, where she leads the public policy priorities of book, education, and research journal publishers in the United States, advancing solutions that drive human empowerment, scientific progress, and a vibrant creative economy.

From 2011 to 2016, Maria served as Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office during an extremely active period of policy analysis. She advised and helped commence the first comprehensive review of the Copyright Act by Congress in decades, testifying on complex issues of law and technology; highlighting the centrality of authors to the public interest; and conducting numerous agency rulemakings and hearings about existing and emerging challenges. Under her leadership, the Office published several impactful studies, including The Making Available Right in the United States; Copyright and the Music Marketplace; and Copyright Small Claims. At the same time, Maria led public proceedings to modernize the records, technology, and authorities of the Copyright Office itself, to better serve the fast-moving transactions of the digital marketplace. She produced a complete overhaul of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, making it widely available for the first time as a living digital publication for courts, practitioners, and staff. Among other initiatives, she established the Barbara A. Ringer Honors Fellowship program and Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence.

Maria has delivered numerous distinguished lectures, including the Horace S. Manges Lecture at Columbia; the David Nelson Lectures at Berkeley; the Christopher Meyer Memorial Lecture at George Washington University; the Roger L. Shidler Lecture at Washington University; and the Robert W. Kastenmeier Lecture at the University of Wisconsin. She is a former Trustee of the Copyright Society and a recipient of the DC Bar’s Champion of Intellectual Property Award.

Earlier in her career, Maria served for eight years as in-house counsel for with the Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, New York, where she advised on governance and exhibitions and directed the global licensing program for the institution’s famous name, buildings, and collections. She began her career in private practice and as a staff attorney with the Authors Guild. She is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School.