After 30+ years focused on cutting-edge public policy issues impacting the Internet, communications, and emerging technology, I joined the Internet Society with the title of Principal, U.S. Internet Policy and Advocacy. I hope to contribute to the Internet Society’s U.S. and global efforts to defend and promote Internet policies, standards, and protocols to address the broad range of challenges on the Internet today, and to continue to make the Internet a place for robust communications, community engagement, and economic growth.
I’ve been a tech geek since the 1970s, an Internet user since the 1980s, and an advocate for an open and vibrant Internet since the 1990s, when I was a law firm partner focused on free expression and the U.S. First Amendment. In the 2000s I worked at the Center for Democracy & Technology where I addressed (among other areas) the policy impacts of technical standards setting bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task Force. In 2011, I entered government service, heading the policy office of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration within the U.S. Department of Commerce, where I handled a broad range of issues including platform accountability, privacy, cybersecurity, national security, surveillance and law enforcement issues, network neutrality, and intellectual property. After a three-year stint at the Brookings Institution working on privacy issues, I joined the Internet Society in July 2022.
I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia—where my parents were heavily involved in the U.S. civil rights movement and civil liberties work—but have spent most of my life in or near Washington, D.C. With two kids out of college and charting their own paths, you will often find my wife and me on hiking trails in the wonderful national, state, and local parks surrounding the D.C. area, or up hiking and boating on the coast of Maine.
