Deputy Regional Administrator
Northwest Mountain Region

Aleta Best is the Deputy Regional Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Northwest Mountain Region. She has over 20 years of federal government program management and supervisory experience and has worked with numerous stakeholders within FAA, DOT, and other federal agencies.

She served as Branch Manager, Program Development Branch, Office of Accident Investigation and Analysis (AVP) in Aviation Safety (AVS), where she oversaw five programs with a total annual contract budget of $50M+, initiated annual increases for AVP’s contract funding, and represented AVP in the NASA-FAA System Wide Safety Research Transition Team, AVS Voluntary Safety Reporting Program, and Aspiring Managers Program. Her previous FAA assignments include program manager roles for the System Safety Management Transformation program, the General Aviation and Part 135 Activity Survey, and Aviation Safety Reporting Program.

In the Office of the Secretary of Transportation's Competition Policy Division, Aleta led the determination of initial rounds of payments to U.S. airlines under the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act following 9/11, analyses of antitrust immunity applications from U.S. and foreign airline alliances, the multi-year Economic Dialogue between DOT and the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and a multi-year joint study between DOT and European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition.  She also coordinated the Competition segment of the Secretary of Transportation’s Future of Aviation Advisory Committee; represented DOT on the Task Force on TRAVEL and Competitiveness, established by President Obama under Executive Order 13597; and wrote speeches for several Assistant Secretaries.

Prior to joining the Department of Transportation, she was an assistant professor of strategic management at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her private sector experience includes lead systems analyst roles at Fortune 500 and academic institutions and consultant roles for small business development programs. She holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Boston University, an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from Texas A&M University, and Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.