Elizabeth (“Liz”) Lai Featherman is Associate Director, Legal Affairs at the Penn Center for Innovation, as well as an Associate General Counsel of the University of Pennsylvania.
Ms. Featherman assists the Penn community in the licensing and commercialization of Penn’s technology and inventions and other legal issues that relate to research and technology transfer. Prior to her role on the legal affairs team, Ms. Featherman drafted and negotiated sponsored research agreements as part of the Corporate Contracts group at PCI.
Before joining Penn, Ms. Featherman was a partner at law firms in Philadelphia and Roseland, New Jersey, focusing on enforcement of intellectual property rights. She was a partner at Cozen O’Connor and was an associate at Schnader in Philadelphia and K&L Gates in Boston. Ms. Featherman also serves as the president of Asian American Women’s Coalition (AAWC), a non-profit organization dedicated to the concerns of Asian American Women in Philadelphia. Ms. Featherman served as a Leadership Academy Fellow at the Diversity Committee at the New Jersey State Bar Association in 2017-2018.
Ms. Featherman received her S.B. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was elected to Pi Tau Sigma. She received her M.S. and pursued doctoral studies in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania. She revived Penn’s chapter of Pi Tau Sigma and served as the first chairman and president of the honors society after years of dormancy. She received her law degree from Franklin Pierce Law Center, now known as University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law.
Ms. Featherman is a member of the National Association of Colleges and University Attorneys (NACUA) and ChIPs. She is admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts.