Aleta Best, PH.D.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025Acting Regional Administrator, Northwest Mountain Region (ANM)
Aleta Best is currently the Acting Regional Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Northwest Mountain Region. She has 24 years of federal government program management and supervisory experience and has worked with numerous stakeholders within FAA, DOT, and other federal agencies.
Most recently, she served as the Deputy Regional Administrator for ANM. Previously, she served as the 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.
Lakes Region in July, 2022 where he supports the Regional Administrator in providing cross-organizational leadership, as well as program and staff management in support of regional stakeholders. Sean entered federal service with the FAA as an aviation noise expert in the FAA Office of Environment and Energy, where he was responsible for managing aircraft noise research and policy programs and served as Senior Aviation Noise Specialist providing technical leadership within the division. Sean has provided leadership on programs to understand the impact on aircraft noise on communities and the development of methodologies to assess the potential for noise concerns from emerging technology vehicles.