 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Former Clinton, Gore Aides To Open Firm
by Bara Vaida
Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary to President Clinton and former communications consultant at Oracle, is creating a communications, consulting and corporate advocacy shop called The Glover Park Group. Michael Feldman and Carter Eskew, former aides to Vice President Al Gore, will be cofounders.
The firm will offer clients "experience," "a clear sense of strategy" and "creativity in execution," National Journal quotes Eskew as saying. Eskew handled communications strategy for Gore's presidential campaign and before that was a partner in the public affairs firm BSMG Worldwide, where he met Lockhart. Lockhart, who faced the press during the impeachment scandal, will be the new firm's chief asset in crisis management consulting.
The partners had planned to open doors in the fall, but the recent power shift in the Senate has caused them to accelerate their plans. Areas they expect to be hot include technology, energy and health care.
Tech Firms Hire Top Government Lobbyists
After 17 years, Mike Maibach has left Intel's Washington office as vice president of government affairs and has joined software applications company Siebel Systems as senior vice president of government affairs. Maibach, who opened Intel's Washington office in 1983, is opening Siebel's first office here and plans to focus on e-government policy and business.
Maibach said Siebel will be joining several high-tech trade associations and plans to create the company's first political action committee. Thomas Siebel, CEO of Siebel Systems gave $500,000 to the Republican Party in the last election.
In other Siebel Systems news, Marc Racicot, the former Republican governor of Montana and now a partner in the Washington law firm of Bracewell & Patterson, has been named to the company's board.
Elsewhere on the corporate front, Reed Elsevier has named Steven Manzo as vice president of government affairs. Manzo will be direct and oversee the company's federal and state program, including the development and implementation of advocacy strategies to influence legislative proposals. Manzo joined Reed Elsevier in 2000 as director of state government affairs. Before that, he was the director of public affairs for an international pharmaceutical trade association.
Top Officials Named At Associations
Kevin McGuiness, the new executive director of the NetCoalition said he would be working to boost the profile of his coalition, which represents seven high-profile Internet companies, including AOL Time Warner and Yahoo. The group, which represents companies that do most of their business over the Internet, plans to continue its focus on issues related to liability, privacy, databases, unsolicited commercial e-mail and e-commerce. McGuiness replaces Daniel Ebert, now the legislative director for his former boss, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), meanwhile, has named Kimberly Kuo vice president of communications. Kuo comes to CTIA from enfoTrust networks, where she was the senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. Before that, she was the senior vice president of investor relations for Value America, an e-commerce company and has worked as communications director for America Online.
In other CTIA news, Rick Ekstrand of Rural Cellular was voted chairman of the trade association's board, Tim Donahue of Nextel Communications was named vice chairman, Mohan Gyani of AT&T Wireless was elected secretary, and Terry Addingtion of First Cellular of Southern Illinois was voted treasurer.
And at Americans for Technology Leadership, Jim Prendergast has been hired as the new executive director. Prendergast formerly served as national director of field membership services for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and as the senior regional manager for the Southeast and Midwest, where he directed the NAM's lobbying activities outside Washington. He also served in several capacities at Citizens for a Sound Economy.
FCC Bureau Taps Broadband Executive
Jeffrey Carlisle has been appointed senior deputy chief of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau. Carlisle currently is in private law practice, specializing in commercial transactions and regulation of data and telephone carriers. He also is vice president for interconnected services and regulatory affairs at INLEC Communications, a Philadelphia-based company that constructs and manages broadband infrastructure within residential apartment buildings.
Previously, Carlisle was an associate with the Washington law firm of O'Melveny & Myers, where he focused on telecommunications mergers and acquisitions, and competitive entry into local markets.
ITI Hosts Fundraiser Breakfast
Lobbyists with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard and the Information Technology Industry Council are hosting a fundraising breakfast on Thursday for Rep. Cal Dooley, co-chair of the New Democrat Coalition. The event is to be held at the Army-Navy Club and donors are asked to contribute $1,000 per political action committee or $500 per individual. Last year, Dooley, who has scored 100 percent on ITI's high-tech voting guide, faced a tough re-election fight.
Visiting the Hill
Intel Chairman Andy Grove, IBM Chairman and CEO Lou Gerstner, Motorola Chairman and CEO Christopher Galvin, NCR Corp. Chairman and CEO Lars Nyberg, and SGI Chairman and CEO Robert Bishop will be in Washington and on Capitol Hill on June 19-20 as part of the semiannual meeting of the Computer Systems Policy Project. The group plans to focus on export controls, trade, privacy and some wireless issues as part of its meetings with lawmakers and administration officials.
Education technology executives also plan to be in town June 12-13 to meet with lawmakers on the House and Senate education committees and with appropriators who will allocate the funds programs in the education bill now being debated in Congress. The Software and Information Industry Association is coordinating the visit, which will include a demonstration of educational technology for lawmakers Tuesday evening.
Recovering From The Tech 'Meltdown'
Hewlett-Packard President and CEO Carly Fiorina, Siebel Systems' founder Tom Siebel, and Insight Cable's Michael Willner are scheduled to speak at The Progress & Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit 2001, to be held August 19-21 in Aspen, Colo. The two-day conference will focus on how to rejuvenate the ailing information technology sector.
"The meltdown in the tech sector is the biggest single issue facing the U.S. economy," said PFF President Jeffrey Eisenach. "This year's summit will focus on what's needed to get things back on track."
Center For Digital Democracy Gets New Funding
Jeff Chester, head of the Center for Digital Democracy, won a $100,000 grant from the Stern Family Fund to expand his organization, which aims to enhance public understanding of how changes in the telecommunications industry affect how citizens use and access the Internet.
"Our communications system is at an important crossroads," Chester said in a statement. "The Internet could either help enrich our democratic culture and our economy by providing access to a diverse range of content, including the many resources of the nonprofit sector. Or the new digital media could evolve into an electronic toll road, dominated by a handful of corporate media giants. ... Our new Center for Digital Democracy will be working to ensure that the public interest helps shape the next generation of the Internet."
The Stern Family Fund makes grants to citizens striving to guarantee responsiveness of public and private institutions that wield substantial power over people's lives.
Bush's Telecom Advisers Meet For First Time
The President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee met this week for the first time in the Bush administration. The committee includes 30 CEOs of telecom network providers and other high-tech companies that aims to ensure the security of the nation's communications' backbone.
This week, the group named two new members, Dell Computer and Global Crossing, and it also named Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio as vice chairman, putting him in line to be chairman next year. This year's NSTAC chairman is Raytheon CEO Daniel Burnham.
Executives from Microsoft, Motorola, EDS, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, Computer Sciences Corp., Unisys, AT&T, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) and Verizon also are on the panel.
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
