Erin Sparks is Senior Advisor for Manufacturing in the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning at the Department of Commerce. Her work in this role consists of developing and implementing the Secretary's strategic priorities in the advanced manufacturing space, including guiding implementation of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership, and Manufacturing Day.

Before joining the Department, Ms. Sparks was a senior policy analyst at the National Governors Association, where she worked with state commerce secretaries and governors' economic advisers on economic and workforce development. She staffed Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman’s 2011-2012 Chair's Initiative on Growing State Economies and is the author or co-author of "Making" Our Future, Redesigning State Economic Development, Degrees for What Jobs, and other reports.

Prior to joining NGA, she worked as a research assistant in the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy research group at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Enterprise Innovation Institute. There she contributed to a number of international and state-level projects, including an analysis of the use of innovation-based strategies by manufacturing companies in the state of Georgia.

She received her M.S. in public policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology and her B.A. from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.