Jelena has been engaged in the reform of legislative process and regulatory framework for doing business, investment promotion, business support programs and establishing partnerships between the public and private sectors, as an expert in policy reform and implementation of economic development policies for the past 20 years. She started her career in 2000, in the International Republican Institute (IRI) working on the development of political parties, civil society organizations and local governments. After that, she spent five years as the Head of Local Economic Development Team in USAID Municipal Economic Growth Activity program. During that appointment Jelena engaged in supporting local communities to boost their economies. She worked on the development of more than 50 economic development strategies and institutional capacities for dealing with economic issues in more than 30 local governments. She worked at similar programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, Slovakia, Kyrgyzstan and Jordan.

Since 2010, Jelena joined NALED, first as the Program Director and then as Policy Director. Within this engagement, she coordinates the efforts of business community and facilitates the dialogue with the Government related to key regulatory reforms that are needed for business to grow.

She had a lead role in improving construction permitting in Serbia, reform of property registration, fighting grey economy, reform of presumptive taxation, inspection reform, reform of sessional work in agriculture, introducing eGovernment in Serbia.

She led the development of Government's Doing Business Reform Program, led the correspondence with the World Bank. During a period of 3 years (until 2017) she was the lead expert and Team leader in construction permitting reform in Serbia, a reform that was recognized by the World Bank, as the biggest reform in Serbia for the past 10 years. Between 2018-2020 she was the key expert in designing the cadaster reform (property register reform), and reform of legislation regulating unregistered work - introducing the Law on sessional work and the new application for labor registration. She is a member of more than 10 Government's working groups, working on tax legislation, labor, public procurement, shadow economy, and other business environment issues. She designs reforms and works on their implementation. She is the true promoter of digitalization and technical transformation as the key tool for fighting corruption, grey economy, fighting bureaucracy and improving efficiency and competitiveness of Serbian economy. She is Molecular biologist/engineer of genetics and physiologist by education.