 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Mr. Smith Goes to Agriculture
by Bara Vaida
James Smith, communications director for the House Republican conference and a chief architect behind the GOP.gov Web site, is leaving Capitol Hill to start a new job as the Agriculture Department's special assistant for homeland security.
In his new position, Smith will handle public affairs for congressional relations and industry outreach, and he will help craft the department's strategy for addressing security threats. Within Agriculture's Office of Homeland Security, Smith noted that his group will conduct various efforts, from fighting terrorist financing -- the department would be the fifth largest bank in the country if it were a bank -- to protecting the food supply and studying biological warfare.
"Leaving the House of Representatives is bittersweet," Smith wrote in an e-mail to colleagues. "It was Martin Luther King Day 1995 when I arrived in Washington in my 1979 Volvo station wagon, having left my news reporter job in Massachusetts to become a foot soldier in the Republican revolution. It was a week after that I started on the Hill as an intern in the whip office."
Jeff Mascott and Kathryn Lehman, who is chief of staff to GOP conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, will replace Smith at the conference.
Life After Congress For Bob Barr
Fierce privacy advocate and former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., will be joining CNN as a commentator, the media organization said last week.
In addition to CNN, Barr plans to be associated with several organizations in his post-congressional career, including the American Conservative Union, Freedom Alliance, Southeastern Legal Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union. He will focus on many of the same issues he addressed in Congress as a member of the Judiciary Committee, including matters relating to privacy, national security and the Bill of Rights.
Barr's previous public service includes service as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, with the CIA and as president of Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Microsoft Taps State Government Expert
After three years as director of the Massachusetts governor's office in Washington, D.C., Anne Gavin has left to join Microsoft's state government affairs team. Gavin will be based in Washington and oversee eight states and the District of Columbia. The states include Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
She also will be Microsoft's liaison to state membership organizations, including the National Governors Association, Republican Governors Association, Democratic Governors' Association, National Conference of State Legislatures and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Previously, Gavin spent several years as public relations manager at the Business Software Alliance.
Executive Service At America Online
America Online appointed two new media executives to manage key areas of the AOL service. The hires include Malcolm Bird as senior vice president and general manager of AOL Kids, and Tina Sharkey as senior vice president of lifestyle and community programming. Bird and Sharkey are to report to Jim Bankoff, executive vice president of operations at AOL Interactive Services.
Bird previously was executive vice president for product and development for Craftsman Productions and worked on various hit series, including "It's My Life" for USA Broadcasting. He also played a key role in three major network launches -- Nickelodeon UK, TeleMonticarlo in Italy and Miami USA network for Barry Diller's USA Broadcasting.
Sharkey most recently was a principal at Majestic Partners, a media and technology consulting firm in New York, where her clients included The New York Times Digital and Cisneros Television Group. Before that, she was group president of Sesame Workshop's online services, where she created the Sesame Street interactive media business. She also was also a co-founder of Web site iVillage and collaborated with Barry Diller on a new home-shopping channel, Q2, a division of QVC.
Washington Beckons BellSouth's Barron
David Barron has been named assistant vice president of federal relations and national security in BellSouth's Washington governmental affairs office. In his new position, he will continue the work he began in August when BellSouth Chairman and CEO Duane Ackerman appointed Barron to be his representative on the Industry Executive Subcommittee (IES) of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC).
Barron will serve as vice chairman of IES and assist Ackerman in supporting the partnership between the federal government and BellSouth in matters involving national security and emergency preparedness. Barron is transferring from New Orleans, where he had been director of regulatory affairs in BellSouth's regulatory and external affairs department.
Cruz Cruises To Texas
R. Ted Cruz, director of the FTC's Office of Policy Planning, will be leaving his job at the end of January, after nearly two years in the position, to become solicitor general of Texas.
During his tenure, Cruz assisted the commission in developing and implementing long-range policy and legal objectives, and directed the FTC's competition advocacy program. He also chaired the agency's Internet task force and organized a three-day public workshop at the FTC examining possible anti-competitive efforts to restrict competition on the Internet.
Before joining the FTC staff, Cruz served as associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, as domestic policy adviser to President Bush on the Bush-Cheney campaign, and as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.
ICANN Names Chairwoman, Volunteers
The board of the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN) has named Linda Wilson as the first chair of its new nominating committee, a body that will select eight of the 15 voting members of the ICANN board and individuals to serve in other key positions.
Wilson has been an ICANN board member since the Internet oversight body's founding in 1998 and has had a long career in higher education, including as a president of Radcliff College and vice president of research at the University of Michigan.
The ICANN board also launched the Interim At-Large Advisory Committee, which was formed to create closer ties among users of the Internet and the ICANN board. The 10 elected volunteers from nine countries include Erick Iriarte Ahon of Peru, Izumi Aizu of Japan, Vittorio Bertola of Italy, Pierre Dandjinous of Benin, Esther Dyson of the United States, Clement Dzidonu of Ghana, Xue Hone of China, Sebastian Ricciardi of Argentina, Thomas Roessler of Germany and Wendy Seltzer of the United States.
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
