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Thinking About Global Technology Growth
by Heather Greenfield
Former Progress and Freedom Foundation President Thomas Lenard has the title of president again. He is now leading iGrowthGlobal, a think tank on issues affecting the information and communications technology industries.
Lenard joins two of his former PFF colleagues at iGrowthGlobal. Former PFF President Raymond Gifford is now iGG's chairman, and Garland McCoy, who left PFF this fall with Lenard, is IGG's founder and chief development officer.
"I'm thrilled to be joining Garland McCoy and Ray Gifford in this exciting new venture," Lenard said. "I've worked with both of them for many years, and this continues a very successful and productive working partnership and takes it in a new direction. In the digital world, the important issues truly are global and that will be reflected in iGG's approach."
Gifford said he is glad Lenard joined their group. "Tom Lenard is the perfect fit for IGG's international focus on communications and technology policy," Gifford said. "Tom has been intimately involved with all the relevant issues for many years. He's the right person to lead iGG in this initial period of growth."
Before serving as president of PFF for about six months, Lenard was a senior economist at the White House Office of Management and Budget, the FTC and the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and he was a member of the economics faculty at the University of California at Davis. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Economists Club.
PFF has been considering several candidates for president and is expected to make an announcement soon.
Google Hires Cyber Security, Privacy Expert
Google's Washington office is growing again. The company recently hired Robert Tai as a policy analyst. He will handle information security, privacy, telecommunications and patent issues.
Communications manager Adam Kovacevich said as someone who has straddled the worlds of engineering and public policy, Tai is a great fit for Google. Kovacevich should know because he used to handle public relations for the Business Software Alliance, where Tai was manager of cyber-crime prevention from 2004 to 2007.
Tai was BSA's advocate for the industry's cyber-security issues. He initially served at BSA as an academic fellow with the Eben Tisdale Fellowship Program in High-Technology Policy. Before that Tai worked for the planning and research division of the California Governor's Office, as well as various IT and high-tech firms.
While obtaining his master's degree in public policy from the University of California at Los Angeles, Tai was honored with a fellowship and department honors for co-authoring "Policy Issues Relating to Emerging Technologies and FCC Spectrum Policy."
Meeks To Be New Spokesman For CDT
After 15 years of writing about technology policy issues, Brock Meeks is switching from journalism to public relations as the new communications director for the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Meeks covered privacy, online free expression, digital copyright, national security and other Internet issues for more than a decade. He most recently served as chief Washington correspondent for MSNBC.com, covering beats ranging from technology to civil liberties and legislative attempts aimed at taming the Internet. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he created and developed the homeland security beat for MSNBC.com.
Before joining MSNBC, Meeks was the Washington correspondent for Wired magazine and its online counterpart, HotWired. Brock wrote features for the magazine and produced two columns for HotWired, "Campaign Dispatch" and "Muckraker." The former column was exclusively dedicated to coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign.
Meeks also was one of the first reporters to write about CDT's formation in 1995.
"Brock is an Internet pioneer," CDT President Leslie Harris said. "He helped launch online journalism. He knows the medium, knows the issues and knows how to talk about them in a way that both thought leaders and general audiences can understand."
Public Knowledge Expands Its Knowledge And Skills
Public Knowledge is bringing two of its former interns back to its Washington office.
Jef Pearlman has been hired as an Equal Justice Works fellow for the next two years. He is a 1999 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earned a master's degree from MIT in computer science in 2000, and received his law degree from Stanford University in 2006.
Pearlman will be working on amicus briefs, FCC filings and high-speed Internet issues.
Rashmi Rangnath will be a law clerk, she has a law degree from the University of Mysore in Mysore, India, and after getting married and coming to the United States, she earned an American University law degree in international legal studies, with a specialization in intellectual property. She will handle copyright and patent issues.
"Both Jef and Rashmi were interns at Public Knowledge, and we are pleased to welcome them back," President Gigi Sohn said. "They will contribute immeasurably to the important work we do."
New Alliance Aimed At Global Security Arena
The lobbying shop of former Attorney General John Ashcroft has formed a strategic alliance with Communications Equity Associates, the firm led by cable television industry veteran Rick Michaels. The new entity, AshcroftCEA, will provide consulting and investment and merchant banking services to stakeholders in the global security arena.
"Our government's primary responsibility is to secure life and liberty," Ashcroft said in a release. "This would be impossible without the innovation and assistance of companies dedicated to developing and providing the latest cutting-edge technology and services in the global security space."
In the past two years, Ashcroft's group played a critical role in more than $43 billion in transaction value related to acquisitions, strategic investments and antitrust issues. CEA has completed more than 900 transactions in 60 countries, totaling more than $40 billion.
Three Receive First Amendment Awards
National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg, AP Chief Executive Tom Curley and Washington Post columnist Colbert King have been honored for their roles in promoting open government and First Amendment rights.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press presented First Amendment Awards to them last week. "What we were shooting for was examples of people who've shown leadership," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the committee. The group provides legal services and research to journalists on freedom-of-information issues.
Totenberg, NPR's legal affairs correspondent, was chosen for her ability to explain complex legal issues to radio listeners. "She can make it sound so logical and so simple," Dalglish said. "She makes government come alive."
Dalglish said Curley was selected because of his work encouraging media organizations to fight for "the public's right to know what's going on in government." And King was honored for his record of "standing up to public officials" -- particularly his role in exposing the botched emergency response to the beating death of New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum.
Quote Of The Week
"Although I lost by the slimmest margin in presidential election history -- only 10 votes -- I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle. It is time for this nation to heal."
-- TV comedian Stephen Colbert, in a statement saying he is not running for president after failing to get on the Democratic presidential primary in his home state of South Carolina.
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