ON THE MOVE

People

by Gregg Sangillo and Winter Casey

Sat. Jul 19, 2008


Techno-File

Longtime technology policy guru Tim Bennett has launched his own government-affairs consulting business, Bennett Strategies. He most recently served as president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, which merged in April with the Information Technology Association of America.

Bennett has also acted as chief operating officer and executive vice president of the American Electronics Association. And he has worked for Hill & Knowlton, Fleishman-Hillard, Steptoe & Johnson, and SJS Advanced Strategies. Bennett has served as a deputy assistant to the U.S. trade representative and as an economist for the Labor Department. He has a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

Bennett says that his strengths are the "ability to distill issues down to their key components, then help groups find consensus on preferred solutions to the issue or problem, create a strategy for stakeholders to pursue those solutions, and managing the process of seeking those solutions."

Bennett, 57, has four children in their 20s. He enjoys gardening with his wife, Rose, who is manager of safety management systems policy at the Federal Aviation Administration. They live in West Springfield, Va., and Bennett works out of his home office.

An Ohio native, he is a huge fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team, which he follows year-round. His five brothers all root for Buckeyes football as well, but the siblings battle it out over their preferred pro football teams. --Winter Casey

Interest Groups

Lauri Fitz-Pegado has taken on a new role as chairwoman of the board of directors at the NEA Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group created by the National Education Association. She is keeping her current position as a partner at the Livingston Group, a lobbying firm founded by former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La. At the Livingston Group since 2001, Fitz-Pegado has represented clients on international development and education issues, including stem-cell research funding and other projects for Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.

A Washington native, she says that her passion for education comes from attending D.C. and Maryland public schools. In addition, her mother, Joyce Fitz, was an NEA member and a public school teacher in the District and Montgomery County. "I came from a family of educators from the public school system," she says. "I just believe in public education. It worked for me."

After graduating from Vassar College in New York, Fitz-Pegado was a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. She later worked at Hill & Knowlton while earning her master's degree at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. At Hill & Knowlton, she was part of a team known for its public-relations work on behalf of Kuwait's government during the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Fitz-Pegado worked part-time as an adviser to the late Ron Brown when he chaired the Democratic National Committee. After Brown became the Clinton administration's Commerce secretary in 1992, Fitz-Pegado served as assistant secretary and director general of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service.

Fitz-Pegado, 52, speaks Spanish and Portuguese. She has two stepchildren living in Portuguese-speaking Angola. While growing up, she was a dancer with the Capitol Ballet Company, and a friend of hers, Sandra Green, is now running the school. "I'm very interested in arts and dance," she says. "And I have a 16-year-old, so she keeps me pretty busy." --Gregg Sangillo

Image-Makers

J. Jioni Palmer, the new national press secretary for Media Matters for America, is writing a mystery novel in his spare time. The protagonist is a young, ambitious journalist living on Long Island who gets wrapped up in a murder and political conspiracy, says Palmer, a former Newsday reporter himself.

Palmer, 33, grew up in Berkeley, Calif., and got his bachelor's degree at the University of California (Los Angeles). He is still very involved in his fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma, for which he is the recording secretary. Palmer also enjoys cooking, working out, and entertaining. "I like to go to Eastern Market [in the Capitol Hill neighborhood] and let whatever grabs my eye sort of dictate what I am going to make," he says. "And, of course, I take requests from those who come over to my dinner parties."

Palmer says that the chance to work for Media Matters for America will give him the "opportunity to get to develop a little bit more of my own profile," as opposed to working on the Hill, where everything revolves around the lawmakers. Palmer last served as press secretary for House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Media Matters is a left-leaning watchdog organization headed by conservative-turned-liberal activist David Brock. The group bills itself as "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Palmer adds, "I believe firmly that a free and independent media is one of our primary safeguards for a democracy." --W.C.

Growing up in the tiny town of Glenville, W.Va., Jessica Echard thought that pretty much everybody was a conservative. "I just assumed that everybody shared my worldview," she says. "Going to college, I realized that was not the case ... and I realized, 'Hey, I think that these are important values, and I'm going to fight for them.' " At just 26, Echard served as executive director of the Eagle Forum, the social-conservative advocacy group headed by longtime activist Phyllis Schlafly. Now Echard is leaving that position to work in Leesburg, Va., as chief of staff for Loudoun County Supervisor Lori Waters, who was Echard's boss at the Eagle Forum.

Echard graduated from Marietta College in Ohio in 2003 and came to Washington as an intern at the Eagle Forum. She later worked as a legislative assistant before being promoted to executive director. "It definitely was kind of trial by fire for the first year as executive director," she says, but "I feel like people came to respect me even though I'm young." One highlight Echard mentions is her work with an ad hoc coalition to help defeat the comprehensive immigration reform bill last year. She is still working with Schlafly on efforts to preserve social-conservative tenets in the GOP platform that will be presented at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Echard is a die-hard fan of the West Virginia University Mountaineers football and basketball teams. "The day that we went to the Fiesta Bowl last year, I wore a West Virginia tattoo on my cheek to the Grover Norquist meeting," she says, referring to Norquist's weekly meeting with conservatives around town. She's also a fitness guru and takes boxing classes. --G.S.

Shorts

Mental Health ... Julie Clark has signed on as vice president of health care reform at the nonprofit group Mental Health America. Clark most recently was a policy adviser at the Labor Department's Office of Disability Employment Policy, after working for the National Council on Independent Living and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. From 1999 through 2002, she was a staffer on the Presidential Task Force on the Employment of Adults with Disabilities. A native of Mount Morris, Ill., Clark earned a bachelor's from Grand Valley State University in Michigan and a law degree from George Mason University. She became interested in mental health when she was a member of the Future Teachers of America program, where she dealt with children who had emotional and behavioral problems. --G.S.

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