Prior to joining Kirkland, Raya was a partner in WilmerHale’s Energy, Environment and Natural Resources practice.
Prior to WilmerHale, Raya played a key role in developing and implementing federal energy and infrastructure policies at the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Obama White House. She served as part of a core leadership team at DOI responsible for the reform and reorganization of offshore drilling regulations in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. She went on to serve in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior, where she led efforts to streamline the permitting of renewable energy and transmission projects on public lands and shape the first offshore wind lease areas along the Atlantic Coast.
Raya was then selected by White House staff to lead a government-wide initiative to improve the federal review of large energy and infrastructure projects. In this role, she spearheaded a 13-agency initiative to improve federal permitting, which resulted in a government-wide plan, now codified in federal law under Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST-41).