Elise Traub

Senior Director of Legislation and Advocacy
Best Friends Animal Society

Elise Traub serves as Best Friends Animal Society’s Senior Director of Legislation and Advocacy. In this capacity, she leads Best Friends’ legislative efforts, advocacy and outreach campaigns, and grassroots engagement. She oversees a diverse team of attorneys, policy experts, research analysts, and advocacy professionals who are working to achieve Best Friends’ goal to make the country’s animal shelters no-kill by 2025. 

Prior to joining Best Friends in 2019, Elise served as an advisor to the State and Community Engagement Division of AARP, which conducts advocacy and community outreach work on behalf of Americans age 50-plus and their families.

Previously, Elise led international legislative campaigns for the Global Shark Conservation campaign of the Pew Charitable Trusts and served as the Director of Wildlife Protection Policy for the Humane Society of the United States. Throughout her career, she has played a key role in the passage and successful defense of many local, state, federal, and international laws to benefit the welfare of animals.

Elise graduated from Wellesley College and George Washington University’s political management graduate program. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband.