Managing Director, Beacon Global Strategies LLC
From 2011-2013, Mr. Allen served as the Majority Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Under Chairman Mike Rogers’ (R-MI) direction, the HPSCI restored the process of an annual intelligence authorization bill to fund and give direction to the seventeen elements of the intelligence community, enacting measures for fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013. The HPSCI also led the House of Representatives’ consideration of cyber security legislation, passing the Cyber Information Sharing Protection Act (CISPA) with bipartisan majorities in 2012 and 2013.
Prior to joining the HPSCI, he was director for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s successor to the 9/11 Commission, the National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former Governor Tom Kean.
Previously, Mr. Allen served in the White House for seven years in a variety of national security policy and legislative roles. At the National Security Council (NSC), he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counter-proliferation Strategy from June 2007 to January 2009 under National Security Advisor Steve Hadley. As Senior Director, he contributed to the development of the U.S. government’s policy on counter-proliferation issues, including on the Iranian, Syrian, and North Korean nuclear files; missile defense; civilian nuclear cooperation including the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement; U.S. exports controls; bio-defense; and WMD and terrorism.
As the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Legislative Affairs from March 2005 to June 2007, Mr. Allen was the NSC’s chief liaison with the national security committees of Congress and led the confirmation teams of DNI nominees Negroponte and McConnell and CIA Director General Michael Hayden.
From December 2001 to February 2005, Mr. Allen worked in the legislative affairs office of the White House’s Homeland Security Council. As Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, Mr. Allen was part of team that managed the White House effort to enact the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
At the beginning of the Bush Administration, Mr. Allen worked in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the Department of State. Mr. Allen received his L.L.M. with distinction in International Law from the Georgetown University Law Center, his J.D. from the University of Alabama (cum laude), and his B.A. from Vanderbilt University.
In addition to his work at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in 2009, Mr. Allen taught National Security Policymaking at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and served as an advisor for the congressionally-created Commission on WMD and Terrorism co-chaired by Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent. Mr. Allen was the Intelligence Team Lead for the Romney for President Transition Team.
Mr. Allen is the author of Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence After 9/11. (Potomac Books, September 2013).
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Former President Trump appointed Marshall S. Billingslea as Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control on April 10, 2020 and accorded him the personal rank of Ambassador from May 18, 2020 to November 17, 2020. Billingslea leads arms control negotiations on behalf of the U.S. Government.
Billingslea most recently served as the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing at the U.S. Department of Treasury since June 2017. In that role he built international coalitions and led U.S. efforts to counter illicit financial activities. In 2018 he was selected unanimously by the 37 member countries of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — the global anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing body — to serve as its President. He also co-chaired the global Counter-ISIS Finance Group and multiple bilateral negotiating fora with friendly and allied nations.
A former senior Pentagon official, Billingslea has deep expertise in arms control and broad experience in foreign policy and national security, having previously served in the Pentagon as the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. Billingslea has also worked as NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment, and as a Senior Professional Staff Member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Billingslea holds a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University. He has been decorated with numerous awards internationally including the Cross of Terra Mariana by the President of Estonia; the Knight’s Cross by the President of Poland; and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Czech Republic. Throughout his years of public service, he has been awarded the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service by the U.S. Secretary of Defense; decorated by the U.S. Secretary of the Navy with the Distinguished Public Service medal; he was most recently awarded the Treasury Medal by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
Professor of the Practice of Law and Executive Director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, Duke University Law School
Charles J. Dunlap Jr. joined the Duke Law faculty in July 2010 where he is currently a professor of the practice of law and Executive Director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. His teaching and scholarly writing focus on national security, law of armed conflict, the use of force under international law, civil-military relations, cyberwar, airpower, military justice, and ethical issues related to the practice of national security law.
Dunlap retired from the Air Force in June 2010, having attained the rank of major general during a 34-year career in the Judge Advocate General Corps. In his capacity as Deputy Judge Advocate General spanning from May 2006 to March 2010, he assisted the Judge Advocate General in the professional supervision of more than 2,200 judge advocates, 350 civilian lawyers, 1,400 enlisted paralegals, and 500 civilians around the world. In addition to overseeing an array of military justice, operational, international, and civil law functions, he provided legal advice to commanders and civilian leaders at all levels.
In the course of his career, Dunlap has been involved in various high-profile interagency and policy matters, including his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives concerning the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Dunlap previously served as the senior lawyer (staff judge advocate) at Air Combat Command Headquarters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, at Air Education and Training Command Headquarters at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, and at U.S. Strategic Command, Omaha, Nebraska, among other leadership posts. Additionally, he served on the faculty of the Air Force Judge Advocate General School where he taught various civil and criminal law topics. An experienced trial lawyer, he also spent two years as a military trial judge for a 22-state circuit. He served tours in the United Kingdom and Korea, and deployed for operations in the Middle East and Africa. He also led military-to-military delegations to Colombia, Uruguay, South Africa, and the Czech Republic.
A prolific author and accomplished public speaker, Dunlap’s commentary on a wide variety of national security topics has been published in leading newspapers and military journals. His 2001 essay written for Harvard University’s Carr Center on “lawfare,” a concept he defines as “the use or misuse of law as a substitute for traditional military means to accomplish an operational objective,” has been highly influential among military scholars and in the broader legal academy.
Dunlap is also the author of the prize-winning essay, “The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012”, originally published in 1992, which was selected for the 40th Anniversary Edition of Parameters (Winter 2010-2011).
Dunlap’s legal scholarship has been published in the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Affairs, the Harvard Law’s National Security Journal, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the University of Nebraska Law Review, the Texas Tech Law Review, Temple Law’s Journal of International & Comparative Law, the University of North Carolina’s Journal of International Law, the Connecticut Law Review, the Tennessee Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, among others.
He’s also authored numerous articles and opinion pieces in a range of publications including The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Air Force Times, Strategic Studies Quarterly, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Business Insider, the Journal of Genocide Research, The Hill, Small Wars Journal, and the blogs, Lawfare and Just Security.
Maj Gen Dunlap founded his blog Lawfire in 2015 and has since written over 300 posts on a wide variety of subjects.
Dunlap's wife, Joy, was a vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters, and later a deputy director of Government Relations for the Military Officers Association of America. She served as the elected president of Duke Campus Club, and is a recipient of the prestigious Order of the Emerald by Kappa Delta sorority. Her blog, Speaking Joyfully, won 3rd place in the blog category at the 2021 Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. They reside in Durham.
Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Angela Stent is Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. During the academic year 2015-2016 she is a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund. From 2004-2006 she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. Stent’s academic work focuses on the triangular political and economic relationship between the United Sates, Russia and Europe. Her publications include: Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, The Soviet Collapse and The New Europe (Princeton University Pres, 1999); From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981); “Repairing US-Russian Relations: A Long Road Ahead” (2009) “Restoration and Revolution in Putin’s Foreign Policy,” (2008), “An Energy Superpower? Russia and Europe” (2008) and “Reluctant Europeans: Three Centuries of Russian Ambivalence Toward the West,” (2007), “Putin’s World” (2014). Her latest book is The Limits of Partnership: US-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014), for which she won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon prize for the best book on the practice of American Diplomacy. She is a member of the senior advisory panel for NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a contributing editor to Survival and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies, World Policy Journal, Internationale Politik and Mirovaia Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnie Otnosheniie. She has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Russia and Central Asia. She is a Trustee of the Eurasia Foundation and of Supporters of Civil Society in Russia. Dr. Stent received her B.A. from Cambridge University, her MSc. with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her M.A. and PhD. from Harvard University.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Managing Director, Beacon Global Strategies LLC
From 2011-2013, Mr. Allen served as the Majority Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Under Chairman Mike Rogers’ (R-MI) direction, the HPSCI restored the process of an annual intelligence authorization bill to fund and give direction to the seventeen elements of the intelligence community, enacting measures for fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013. The HPSCI also led the House of Representatives’ consideration of cyber security legislation, passing the Cyber Information Sharing Protection Act (CISPA) with bipartisan majorities in 2012 and 2013.
Prior to joining the HPSCI, he was director for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s successor to the 9/11 Commission, the National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former Governor Tom Kean.
Previously, Mr. Allen served in the White House for seven years in a variety of national security policy and legislative roles. At the National Security Council (NSC), he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counter-proliferation Strategy from June 2007 to January 2009 under National Security Advisor Steve Hadley. As Senior Director, he contributed to the development of the U.S. government’s policy on counter-proliferation issues, including on the Iranian, Syrian, and North Korean nuclear files; missile defense; civilian nuclear cooperation including the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement; U.S. exports controls; bio-defense; and WMD and terrorism.
As the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Legislative Affairs from March 2005 to June 2007, Mr. Allen was the NSC’s chief liaison with the national security committees of Congress and led the confirmation teams of DNI nominees Negroponte and McConnell and CIA Director General Michael Hayden.
From December 2001 to February 2005, Mr. Allen worked in the legislative affairs office of the White House’s Homeland Security Council. As Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, Mr. Allen was part of team that managed the White House effort to enact the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
At the beginning of the Bush Administration, Mr. Allen worked in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the Department of State. Mr. Allen received his L.L.M. with distinction in International Law from the Georgetown University Law Center, his J.D. from the University of Alabama (cum laude), and his B.A. from Vanderbilt University.
In addition to his work at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in 2009, Mr. Allen taught National Security Policymaking at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and served as an advisor for the congressionally-created Commission on WMD and Terrorism co-chaired by Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent. Mr. Allen was the Intelligence Team Lead for the Romney for President Transition Team.
Mr. Allen is the author of Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence After 9/11. (Potomac Books, September 2013).
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Former President Trump appointed Marshall S. Billingslea as Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control on April 10, 2020 and accorded him the personal rank of Ambassador from May 18, 2020 to November 17, 2020. Billingslea leads arms control negotiations on behalf of the U.S. Government.
Billingslea most recently served as the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing at the U.S. Department of Treasury since June 2017. In that role he built international coalitions and led U.S. efforts to counter illicit financial activities. In 2018 he was selected unanimously by the 37 member countries of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — the global anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing body — to serve as its President. He also co-chaired the global Counter-ISIS Finance Group and multiple bilateral negotiating fora with friendly and allied nations.
A former senior Pentagon official, Billingslea has deep expertise in arms control and broad experience in foreign policy and national security, having previously served in the Pentagon as the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. Billingslea has also worked as NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment, and as a Senior Professional Staff Member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Billingslea holds a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University. He has been decorated with numerous awards internationally including the Cross of Terra Mariana by the President of Estonia; the Knight’s Cross by the President of Poland; and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Czech Republic. Throughout his years of public service, he has been awarded the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service by the U.S. Secretary of Defense; decorated by the U.S. Secretary of the Navy with the Distinguished Public Service medal; he was most recently awarded the Treasury Medal by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
Professor of the Practice of Law and Executive Director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, Duke University Law School
Charles J. Dunlap Jr. joined the Duke Law faculty in July 2010 where he is currently a professor of the practice of law and Executive Director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. His teaching and scholarly writing focus on national security, law of armed conflict, the use of force under international law, civil-military relations, cyberwar, airpower, military justice, and ethical issues related to the practice of national security law.
Dunlap retired from the Air Force in June 2010, having attained the rank of major general during a 34-year career in the Judge Advocate General Corps. In his capacity as Deputy Judge Advocate General spanning from May 2006 to March 2010, he assisted the Judge Advocate General in the professional supervision of more than 2,200 judge advocates, 350 civilian lawyers, 1,400 enlisted paralegals, and 500 civilians around the world. In addition to overseeing an array of military justice, operational, international, and civil law functions, he provided legal advice to commanders and civilian leaders at all levels.
In the course of his career, Dunlap has been involved in various high-profile interagency and policy matters, including his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives concerning the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Dunlap previously served as the senior lawyer (staff judge advocate) at Air Combat Command Headquarters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, at Air Education and Training Command Headquarters at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, and at U.S. Strategic Command, Omaha, Nebraska, among other leadership posts. Additionally, he served on the faculty of the Air Force Judge Advocate General School where he taught various civil and criminal law topics. An experienced trial lawyer, he also spent two years as a military trial judge for a 22-state circuit. He served tours in the United Kingdom and Korea, and deployed for operations in the Middle East and Africa. He also led military-to-military delegations to Colombia, Uruguay, South Africa, and the Czech Republic.
A prolific author and accomplished public speaker, Dunlap’s commentary on a wide variety of national security topics has been published in leading newspapers and military journals. His 2001 essay written for Harvard University’s Carr Center on “lawfare,” a concept he defines as “the use or misuse of law as a substitute for traditional military means to accomplish an operational objective,” has been highly influential among military scholars and in the broader legal academy.
Dunlap is also the author of the prize-winning essay, “The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012”, originally published in 1992, which was selected for the 40th Anniversary Edition of Parameters (Winter 2010-2011).
Dunlap’s legal scholarship has been published in the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Affairs, the Harvard Law’s National Security Journal, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the University of Nebraska Law Review, the Texas Tech Law Review, Temple Law’s Journal of International & Comparative Law, the University of North Carolina’s Journal of International Law, the Connecticut Law Review, the Tennessee Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, among others.
He’s also authored numerous articles and opinion pieces in a range of publications including The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Air Force Times, Strategic Studies Quarterly, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Business Insider, the Journal of Genocide Research, The Hill, Small Wars Journal, and the blogs, Lawfare and Just Security.
Maj Gen Dunlap founded his blog Lawfire in 2015 and has since written over 300 posts on a wide variety of subjects.
Dunlap's wife, Joy, was a vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters, and later a deputy director of Government Relations for the Military Officers Association of America. She served as the elected president of Duke Campus Club, and is a recipient of the prestigious Order of the Emerald by Kappa Delta sorority. Her blog, Speaking Joyfully, won 3rd place in the blog category at the 2021 Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. They reside in Durham.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Angela Stent is Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the Brookings Institution and co-chairs its Hewett Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs. During the academic year 2015-2016 she is a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund. From 2004-2006 she served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001, she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. Stent’s academic work focuses on the triangular political and economic relationship between the United Sates, Russia and Europe. Her publications include: Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, The Soviet Collapse and The New Europe (Princeton University Pres, 1999); From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981); “Repairing US-Russian Relations: A Long Road Ahead” (2009) “Restoration and Revolution in Putin’s Foreign Policy,” (2008), “An Energy Superpower? Russia and Europe” (2008) and “Reluctant Europeans: Three Centuries of Russian Ambivalence Toward the West,” (2007), “Putin’s World” (2014). Her latest book is The Limits of Partnership: US-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014), for which she won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon prize for the best book on the practice of American Diplomacy. She is a member of the senior advisory panel for NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a contributing editor to Survival and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies, World Policy Journal, Internationale Politik and Mirovaia Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnie Otnosheniie. She has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Russia and Central Asia. She is a Trustee of the Eurasia Foundation and of Supporters of Civil Society in Russia. Dr. Stent received her B.A. from Cambridge University, her MSc. with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her M.A. and PhD. from Harvard University.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
On March 20, 2018, Judge Elizabeth L. Branch (Lisa) was sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Branch attended and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina (B.A., cum laude, 1990), and Emory University School of Law (J.D., with distinction, 1994).
After graduating from law school, Judge Branch served as a federal law clerk to The Honorable J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia from 1994 to 1996. Following her clerkship, Judge Branch joined the litigation department of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta as an associate and then a partner.
From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
She returned to Smith Gambrell in 2008 as a litigation partner. Judge Branch then was appointed to the Court of Appeals of Georgia by Governor Nathan Deal, taking office on September 4, 2012, where she served until March 19, 2018.
Judge Branch is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown Law
David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.
David has published widely in law journals and the popular press, including The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He is the author or editor of ten books, several of which have won awards. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and best book on an issue of national policy in1999 by the American Political Science Association.
David received his bachelor’s degree and law degree from Yale University. He worked as a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights from 1985 to 1990. He has continued to litigate as a professor and, from 2017 to 2024, as National Legal Director of the ACLU. He has litigated many significant constitutional cases at the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson (1989), which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited forms of sex discrimination under Title VII; Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. (2021), which protected student online speech from school discipline; and National Rifle Association v. Vullo (2024), which held that government officials violate the First Amendment when they use their regulatory authority to coerce private parties to blacklist a disfavored political group.
David has received two honorary degrees and numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Norman Dorsen Presidential Prize from the ACLU for lifetime commitment to civil liberties. The late New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called David “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today.” Nat Hentoff called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”
Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Sherif Girgis joined Notre Dame Law School in 2021. Prior to joining Notre Dame Law, Sherif practiced law at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., where he focused on appellate and complex civil litigation. Before that, Girgis served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Now completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton, Girgis earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Felix S. Cohen Prize for best paper in legal philosophy. Before law school, he earned a master's degree (B.Phil.) in philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Princeton, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude. Girgis is coauthor of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, cited in a dissent in United States v. Windsor, and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination, released by Oxford University Press in 2017. His work at the intersection of philosophy and law--including criminal law, constitutional liberties, and jurisprudence--has appeared in academic and popular venues including the Yale Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy of Law, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
President, JCN
Carrie Campbell Severino is the president of the JCN, and co-author with Mollie Hemingway of the bestselling book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. As a go-to expert on the confirmation process, Mrs. Severino has been extensively quoted in the media. She regularly appears on television, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC’s This Week.
Severino writes and speaks on a wide range of judicial issues, including the constitutional limits on government, the federal nomination process, and state judicial selection. She has testified before Congress on constitutional questions and briefed Senators on judicial nominations, and regularly files briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases. She was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.), Duke University (B.A., Biology), and Michigan State University (M.A., Linguistics).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
On March 20, 2018, Judge Elizabeth L. Branch (Lisa) was sworn in as a United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Branch attended and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina (B.A., cum laude, 1990), and Emory University School of Law (J.D., with distinction, 1994).
After graduating from law school, Judge Branch served as a federal law clerk to The Honorable J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia from 1994 to 1996. Following her clerkship, Judge Branch joined the litigation department of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta as an associate and then a partner.
From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
She returned to Smith Gambrell in 2008 as a litigation partner. Judge Branch then was appointed to the Court of Appeals of Georgia by Governor Nathan Deal, taking office on September 4, 2012, where she served until March 19, 2018.
Judge Branch is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown Law
David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.
David has published widely in law journals and the popular press, including The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He is the author or editor of ten books, several of which have won awards. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and best book on an issue of national policy in1999 by the American Political Science Association.
David received his bachelor’s degree and law degree from Yale University. He worked as a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights from 1985 to 1990. He has continued to litigate as a professor and, from 2017 to 2024, as National Legal Director of the ACLU. He has litigated many significant constitutional cases at the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson (1989), which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited forms of sex discrimination under Title VII; Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. (2021), which protected student online speech from school discipline; and National Rifle Association v. Vullo (2024), which held that government officials violate the First Amendment when they use their regulatory authority to coerce private parties to blacklist a disfavored political group.
David has received two honorary degrees and numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Norman Dorsen Presidential Prize from the ACLU for lifetime commitment to civil liberties. The late New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called David “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today.” Nat Hentoff called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”
Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Sherif Girgis joined Notre Dame Law School in 2021. Prior to joining Notre Dame Law, Sherif practiced law at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., where he focused on appellate and complex civil litigation. Before that, Girgis served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Now completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton, Girgis earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Felix S. Cohen Prize for best paper in legal philosophy. Before law school, he earned a master's degree (B.Phil.) in philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Princeton, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude. Girgis is coauthor of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, cited in a dissent in United States v. Windsor, and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination, released by Oxford University Press in 2017. His work at the intersection of philosophy and law--including criminal law, constitutional liberties, and jurisprudence--has appeared in academic and popular venues including the Yale Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy of Law, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
President, JCN
Carrie Campbell Severino is the president of the JCN, and co-author with Mollie Hemingway of the bestselling book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. As a go-to expert on the confirmation process, Mrs. Severino has been extensively quoted in the media. She regularly appears on television, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC’s This Week.
Severino writes and speaks on a wide range of judicial issues, including the constitutional limits on government, the federal nomination process, and state judicial selection. She has testified before Congress on constitutional questions and briefed Senators on judicial nominations, and regularly files briefs in high-profile Supreme Court cases. She was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.), Duke University (B.A., Biology), and Michigan State University (M.A., Linguistics).
Professor of Law, Elon University
Enrique Armijo, Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law, Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project and the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, and Fellow at the George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics, teaches and researches in the areas of the First Amendment, constitutional law, torts, administrative law, media and internet law, and international freedom of expression. Professor Armijo’s current scholarship addresses the interaction between new technologies and free speech. His scholarly work has recently appeared in the Cato Supreme Court Review, Boston University Law Review, the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, the peer-reviewed Communication Law and Policy and Political Science Quarterly, and several other journals. His work has been cited by the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and other agencies, and in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. He also has provided advice on media and internet law reform to governments, stakeholders and NGOs located around the world, including in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Most recently, he has worked on media and communications reform projects in Myanmar (Burma) for the U.S. Department of State with Annenberg’s Center for Global Communications Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His commentaries on these and other topics have appeared on NPR's On the Media, Voice of America , WUNC-FM, and Bloomberg Law, and in print in the Charlotte Observer, the Raleigh News and Observer, and several other outlets nationwide.
President and General Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
NCLA’s President and General Counsel, Mark Chenoweth, has observed the administrative state up close and personal from perches in all four branches of the federal government. Mark served as the first chief of staff to Congressman Mike Pompeo, as legal counsel to Commissioner Anne Northup at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, as an attorney advisor in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as a law clerk to the Hon. Danny J. Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Mark has worked in several different roles in the private sector as well. He began his legal career in D.C. as a regulatory associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. He then returned to his home state of Kansas to serve as in-house counsel for Koch Industries. Most recently he spent over four years as general counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation.
Mark is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School, where he co-founded the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship and became a Tony Patiño Fellow. Mark has been widely quoted and/or published in newspapers and websites including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New Hampshire Union Leader, and Metropolitan Corporate Counsel. He has also had recurring op-eds in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and at Forbes.com.
Legislative and Policy Director, FIRE
Joe Cohn serves as director of FIRE’s Legislative and Policy department, overseeing a team of attorneys and staff tasked with monitoring and engaging on legislation and regulatory matters. Under his leadership, FIRE has secured numerous victories for free speech and due process at the state and federal level.
Joe is a 2004 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Fels Institute of Government Administration, where he earned his Juris Doctor and master’s degree in Government Administration. In 2000, he graduated with distinction from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he co-founded the student chapter of the ACLU. A former staff attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and law clerk in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Joe joined FIRE in 2012 with a career-long dedication to advancing the cause of civil liberties, including through his service as a staff attorney at the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania where he provided legal services to underserved communities. His awards include accolades from The Legal Intelligencer and Pennsylvania Law Weekly, who named him a 2007 “Lawyer on the Fast Track,” and from Super Lawyers magazine, who named him a “Rising Star” in 2008.
Joe’s career also includes teaching at University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Gittis Civil Practice Clinic in 2010, where he lectured on good trial practices and supervised law students as they represented real clients in both state and federal courts. Just prior to joining FIRE, Joe served as the interim legal director for ACLU affiliates in Nevada and Utah.
As legislative and policy director, Joe spearheads FIRE’s advocacy at all levels of government. He has testified before Congress and in state legislatures across the country and has drafted numerous bills that have been enacted into state law. He regularly comments on FIRE’s issues in the media.
Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Michael Ellis was sworn in as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on February 10, 2025. Deputy Director Ellis has held a variety of senior national security positions, including General Counsel of the National Security Agency and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council.
Deputy Director Ellis previously served in the White House Counsel's Office, providing legal advice on national security and foreign relations. Prior to the White House, he was General Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
Before returning to government, Deputy Director Ellis was the General Counsel of Rumble, a publicly traded video sharing platform and cloud services provider.
Deputy Director Ellis is a graduate of Yale Law School and Dartmouth College. Following law school, he served as a clerk to two federal judges. He is a "Jeopardy!" champion.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
Professor of Law, Elon University
Enrique Armijo, Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law, Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project and the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, and Fellow at the George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics, teaches and researches in the areas of the First Amendment, constitutional law, torts, administrative law, media and internet law, and international freedom of expression. Professor Armijo’s current scholarship addresses the interaction between new technologies and free speech. His scholarly work has recently appeared in the Cato Supreme Court Review, Boston University Law Review, the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, the peer-reviewed Communication Law and Policy and Political Science Quarterly, and several other journals. His work has been cited by the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and other agencies, and in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. He also has provided advice on media and internet law reform to governments, stakeholders and NGOs located around the world, including in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Most recently, he has worked on media and communications reform projects in Myanmar (Burma) for the U.S. Department of State with Annenberg’s Center for Global Communications Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His commentaries on these and other topics have appeared on NPR's On the Media, Voice of America , WUNC-FM, and Bloomberg Law, and in print in the Charlotte Observer, the Raleigh News and Observer, and several other outlets nationwide.
President and General Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
NCLA’s President and General Counsel, Mark Chenoweth, has observed the administrative state up close and personal from perches in all four branches of the federal government. Mark served as the first chief of staff to Congressman Mike Pompeo, as legal counsel to Commissioner Anne Northup at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, as an attorney advisor in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as a law clerk to the Hon. Danny J. Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Mark has worked in several different roles in the private sector as well. He began his legal career in D.C. as a regulatory associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. He then returned to his home state of Kansas to serve as in-house counsel for Koch Industries. Most recently he spent over four years as general counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation.
Mark is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School, where he co-founded the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship and became a Tony Patiño Fellow. Mark has been widely quoted and/or published in newspapers and websites including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New Hampshire Union Leader, and Metropolitan Corporate Counsel. He has also had recurring op-eds in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and at Forbes.com.
Legislative and Policy Director, FIRE
Joe Cohn serves as director of FIRE’s Legislative and Policy department, overseeing a team of attorneys and staff tasked with monitoring and engaging on legislation and regulatory matters. Under his leadership, FIRE has secured numerous victories for free speech and due process at the state and federal level.
Joe is a 2004 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Fels Institute of Government Administration, where he earned his Juris Doctor and master’s degree in Government Administration. In 2000, he graduated with distinction from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he co-founded the student chapter of the ACLU. A former staff attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and law clerk in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Joe joined FIRE in 2012 with a career-long dedication to advancing the cause of civil liberties, including through his service as a staff attorney at the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania where he provided legal services to underserved communities. His awards include accolades from The Legal Intelligencer and Pennsylvania Law Weekly, who named him a 2007 “Lawyer on the Fast Track,” and from Super Lawyers magazine, who named him a “Rising Star” in 2008.
Joe’s career also includes teaching at University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Gittis Civil Practice Clinic in 2010, where he lectured on good trial practices and supervised law students as they represented real clients in both state and federal courts. Just prior to joining FIRE, Joe served as the interim legal director for ACLU affiliates in Nevada and Utah.
As legislative and policy director, Joe spearheads FIRE’s advocacy at all levels of government. He has testified before Congress and in state legislatures across the country and has drafted numerous bills that have been enacted into state law. He regularly comments on FIRE’s issues in the media.
Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Michael Ellis was sworn in as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on February 10, 2025. Deputy Director Ellis has held a variety of senior national security positions, including General Counsel of the National Security Agency and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council.
Deputy Director Ellis previously served in the White House Counsel's Office, providing legal advice on national security and foreign relations. Prior to the White House, he was General Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
Before returning to government, Deputy Director Ellis was the General Counsel of Rumble, a publicly traded video sharing platform and cloud services provider.
Deputy Director Ellis is a graduate of Yale Law School and Dartmouth College. Following law school, he served as a clerk to two federal judges. He is a "Jeopardy!" champion.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
CEO, The Rural Broadband Association
Shirley Bloomfield is chief executive officer of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, the premier association representing nearly 850 independent telecommunications companies that are leading innovation in rural and small-town America. With more than 30 years of experience representing the country’s smallest telecom operators, Bloomfield is an expert on the role of federal communications policies in sustaining the vitality of rural and remote communities and the benefits rural broadband networks bring to millions of American families and businesses and the national economy. Bloomfield has a strong track record of leadership in seeking synergies and aligning strategic partnerships among rural telecom companies, their larger counterparts, other rural utilities and local and federal governments, further expanding business opportunities for small communications providers. Under her leadership, NTCA has made broadband an integral part of policy conversations in Washington, D.C., and has secured billions of dollars in federal funding for rural service providers to expand build out and sustain networks and help close the digital divide. Bloomfield is a strong supporter of national efforts to improve the resilience and reliability of critical electric and telecommunications infrastructure and serves as a board member of NRTC and the Southeast Reliability Corporation (SERC).
Executive Director, Connect LA
Veneeth is the first executive director for the state of Louisiana's broadband efforts (also known as ConnectLa). He is responsible for coordinating efforts among federal, state and local leaders to eliminate the digital divide in Louisiana by 2029.
He and his team are considered thought leaders in the broadband community for their rapid scale up and execution of federal dollars to impact the 1.5 million residents in Louisiana who lack high speed internet. Louisiana's efforts have been recognized and he is often asked to speak at local and national events by the Pew Charitable Trusts, National Governors Association, Former FCC officials, Fiber Broadband Association, National Conference of State Legislators, US Department of Commerce's SelectUSA Summit, National Digital Inclusion Alliance and other organizations.
ConnectLa's work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Advocate, USA Today's network of newspapers and other leading telecom publications.
Their office has also been recognized nationally and among other states in the following ways:
From 2018-2021, he was the Assistant Chief Administrative Officer for East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Sharon Weston-Broome. During, the parish saw the best year in history for economic development projects. His role included proactive outreach to executives from leading tech, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, articulating the case for Baton Rouge as an investment destination. In addition, he was involved in the lifecycle of Economic Development deals and he led the administration's response in helping small business owners during the pandemic.
Veneeth was asked by Governor John Bel Edwards to co-chair his Resilient Louisiana Healthcare Task Force, which included the CEOs of Ochsner, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana and Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System. The task force recommended approaches to create an innovative healthcare economy given the challenges posed by the pandemic. Prior to his time as a public servant, Veneeth helped build the Venture Capital/Private Equity healthcare practice for Sage Growth Partners and worked in the Office of the Honorable Robert Mosbacher Jr., former CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under President George W. Bush.
Veneeth received the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni Award for Public Service in 2022, 2020 Leadership Louisiana Recipient by the Council for a Better Louisiana and 2018 Forty under 40 in Baton Rouge by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.
He is on Ochsner's Health State Advisory Board with the focus of significantly improving the healthcare rankings in the state, Board of Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation and Chairman for Innovation Catalyst, a non-profit evergreen investment based in Baton Rouge that has made more than a dozen investments startups.
He received his Master of Science in finance from Johns Hopkins University and his Bachelor of Science in economics from Purdue University. Veneeth grew up in Baton Rouge and attended Baton Rouge High School.
Visiting Fellow, Hudson Institute
Michael O’Rielly is a visiting fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center for the Economics of the Internet.
Comm. O'Rielly was nominated for a seat on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama on August 1, 2013 and was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on October 29, 2013. He was sworn into office on November 4, 2013. On January 29, 2015, he was sworn into office for a new term, following his re-nomination by the President and confirmation by the United States Senate and served through December 11, 2020.
Prior to joining the agency Commissioner O’Rielly served as a Policy Advisor in the Office of the Senate Republican Whip, led by U.S. Senator John Cornyn, since January 2013. He worked in the Republican Whip’s Office since 2010, as an Advisor from 2010 to 2012 and Deputy Chief of Staff and Policy Director from 2012 to 2013 for U.S. Senator Jon Kyl.
He previously worked for the Republican Policy Committee in the U.S. Senate as a Policy Analyst for Banking, Technology, Transportation, Trade, and Commerce issues from 2009 to 2010. Prior to this, Commissioner O’Rielly worked in the Office of U.S. Senator John Sununu, as Legislative Director from 2007 to 2009, and Senior Legislative Assistant from 2003 to 2007. Before his tenure as a Senate staffer, he served as a Professional Staff Member on the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the United States House of Representatives from 1998 to 2003, and Telecommunications Policy Analyst from 1995 to 1998.
He began his career as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Congressman Tom Bliley from 1994 to 1995.
Commissioner O’Rielly received his B.A. from the University of Rochester.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
CEO, The Rural Broadband Association
Shirley Bloomfield is chief executive officer of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, the premier association representing nearly 850 independent telecommunications companies that are leading innovation in rural and small-town America. With more than 30 years of experience representing the country’s smallest telecom operators, Bloomfield is an expert on the role of federal communications policies in sustaining the vitality of rural and remote communities and the benefits rural broadband networks bring to millions of American families and businesses and the national economy. Bloomfield has a strong track record of leadership in seeking synergies and aligning strategic partnerships among rural telecom companies, their larger counterparts, other rural utilities and local and federal governments, further expanding business opportunities for small communications providers. Under her leadership, NTCA has made broadband an integral part of policy conversations in Washington, D.C., and has secured billions of dollars in federal funding for rural service providers to expand build out and sustain networks and help close the digital divide. Bloomfield is a strong supporter of national efforts to improve the resilience and reliability of critical electric and telecommunications infrastructure and serves as a board member of NRTC and the Southeast Reliability Corporation (SERC).
Executive Director, Connect LA
Veneeth is the first executive director for the state of Louisiana's broadband efforts (also known as ConnectLa). He is responsible for coordinating efforts among federal, state and local leaders to eliminate the digital divide in Louisiana by 2029.
He and his team are considered thought leaders in the broadband community for their rapid scale up and execution of federal dollars to impact the 1.5 million residents in Louisiana who lack high speed internet. Louisiana's efforts have been recognized and he is often asked to speak at local and national events by the Pew Charitable Trusts, National Governors Association, Former FCC officials, Fiber Broadband Association, National Conference of State Legislators, US Department of Commerce's SelectUSA Summit, National Digital Inclusion Alliance and other organizations.
ConnectLa's work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Advocate, USA Today's network of newspapers and other leading telecom publications.
Their office has also been recognized nationally and among other states in the following ways:
From 2018-2021, he was the Assistant Chief Administrative Officer for East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Sharon Weston-Broome. During, the parish saw the best year in history for economic development projects. His role included proactive outreach to executives from leading tech, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, articulating the case for Baton Rouge as an investment destination. In addition, he was involved in the lifecycle of Economic Development deals and he led the administration's response in helping small business owners during the pandemic.
Veneeth was asked by Governor John Bel Edwards to co-chair his Resilient Louisiana Healthcare Task Force, which included the CEOs of Ochsner, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana and Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System. The task force recommended approaches to create an innovative healthcare economy given the challenges posed by the pandemic. Prior to his time as a public servant, Veneeth helped build the Venture Capital/Private Equity healthcare practice for Sage Growth Partners and worked in the Office of the Honorable Robert Mosbacher Jr., former CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under President George W. Bush.
Veneeth received the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni Award for Public Service in 2022, 2020 Leadership Louisiana Recipient by the Council for a Better Louisiana and 2018 Forty under 40 in Baton Rouge by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.
He is on Ochsner's Health State Advisory Board with the focus of significantly improving the healthcare rankings in the state, Board of Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation and Chairman for Innovation Catalyst, a non-profit evergreen investment based in Baton Rouge that has made more than a dozen investments startups.
He received his Master of Science in finance from Johns Hopkins University and his Bachelor of Science in economics from Purdue University. Veneeth grew up in Baton Rouge and attended Baton Rouge High School.
Visiting Fellow, Hudson Institute
Michael O’Rielly is a visiting fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center for the Economics of the Internet.
Comm. O'Rielly was nominated for a seat on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama on August 1, 2013 and was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on October 29, 2013. He was sworn into office on November 4, 2013. On January 29, 2015, he was sworn into office for a new term, following his re-nomination by the President and confirmation by the United States Senate and served through December 11, 2020.
Prior to joining the agency Commissioner O’Rielly served as a Policy Advisor in the Office of the Senate Republican Whip, led by U.S. Senator John Cornyn, since January 2013. He worked in the Republican Whip’s Office since 2010, as an Advisor from 2010 to 2012 and Deputy Chief of Staff and Policy Director from 2012 to 2013 for U.S. Senator Jon Kyl.
He previously worked for the Republican Policy Committee in the U.S. Senate as a Policy Analyst for Banking, Technology, Transportation, Trade, and Commerce issues from 2009 to 2010. Prior to this, Commissioner O’Rielly worked in the Office of U.S. Senator John Sununu, as Legislative Director from 2007 to 2009, and Senior Legislative Assistant from 2003 to 2007. Before his tenure as a Senate staffer, he served as a Professional Staff Member on the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the United States House of Representatives from 1998 to 2003, and Telecommunications Policy Analyst from 1995 to 1998.
He began his career as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Congressman Tom Bliley from 1994 to 1995.
Commissioner O’Rielly received his B.A. from the University of Rochester.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
JEFFREY S. SUTTON is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as Chair of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, and Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Since 1993, Chief Judge Sutton has been an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University College of Law, where he teaches seminars on State Constitutional Law, the United States Supreme Court, and Appellate Advocacy. He also teaches a class on State Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Among other publications, he is the author of Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation and 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. He is the co-author of a casebook, State Constitutional Law: The Modern Experience, as well as The Law of Judicial Precedent. He is also the co-editor of The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. In 2006, Chief Judge Sutton was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2017 he was elected to its Council.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Chairman & Co-Founder, Cynosure Group
Randal Quarles is Chairman and co-founder of The Cynosure Group. Before founding Cynosure, Mr. Quarles was a long-time partner of the Carlyle Group, where he began the firm’s program of investments in the financial services industry during the 2008 financial crisis.
From October 2017 through October 2021, Mr. Quarles was Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, serving as the system’s first Vice Chairman for Supervision, charged specifically with ensuring stability of the financial sector. He also served as the Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (“FSB”) from December 2018 until December 2021; a global body established after the Great Financial Crisis to coordinate international efforts to enhance financial stability. In both positions, he played a key role in crafting the US and international response to the economic and financial dislocations of COVID-19, successfully preventing widespread global disruption of the financial system. As FSB Chairman, he was a regular delegate to the finance ministers’ meetings of the G-7 and G20 Groups of nations and to the Summit meetings of the G20. As Fed Vice Chair, he was a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets monetary policy for the United States.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Quarles was Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, where he led the Department’s activities in financial sector and capital markets policy, including coordination of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
Before serving as Under Secretary, Mr. Quarles was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, where he had a key role in response to several international crises. Mr. Quarles was also the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, a member of the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, and board representative for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. In earlier public service, he was an integral member of the Treasury team in the George H. W. Bush Administration that developed the governmental response to the savings and loan crisis.
Between his tours of duty in public service, Mr. Quarles was a partner with the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, working at various times in both the New York and London offices, where he was co-head of the firm’s financial institutions practice and advised on transactions that included a number of the largest financial sector mergers ever completed.
Mr. Quarles received an A.B. summa cum laude in philosophy and economics from Columbia in 1981 and a J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1984.
Duke University Law School, Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business
Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business at Duke University and Founding Director of Duke’s interdisciplinary Global Capital Markets Center (now renamed the Global Financial Markets Center). His areas of research and scholarship include insolvency and bankruptcy law, international finance, capital markets, systemic risk, corporate governance, and commercial law. (Links to his scholarship are at http://law.duke.edu/fac/schwarcz/.) He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (summa cum laude) and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, he was a partner at two of the world’s leading law firms and Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School. He also helped to pioneer the field of asset securitization, and his book, Structured Finance, A Guide to the Principles of Asset Securitization (3d edition), is one of the most widely used texts in the field.
Professor Schwarcz has also been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Law, Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, Senior Fellow at The University of Melbourne Law School, Visiting Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen (LMU) Center for Advanced Studies, Guest Professor at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws, Distinguished Honorary Professor, University of Durham Law School, the MacCormick Fellow at The University of Edinburgh School of Law, the Liberty Fellow at the University of Leeds School of Law (scheduled for May-June 2020), and an adviser to the United Nations. He has given numerous endowed or distinguished public lectures, including at The University of Hong Kong, the University of Oxford (the Leverhulme Lectures 2010, available at http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/leverhulme2010.php), Georgetown University Law Center, National University of Singapore, University of Florence, Leiden University, Radboud University Nijmegen, Trinity College Dublin School of Law, and The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. He has served as an expert at meetings of the World Economic Forum. He also has given numerous keynote speeches, including at annual conferences of the European Central Bank, the Corporate Law Teachers Association of Australia, New Zealand, and Asia-Pacific, the National Business Law Scholars Conference (at The University of Chicago Law School), Moody’s Corporation, and the Asian Securitisation Forum.
Additionally, Professor Schwarcz has testified before the U.S. Congress on topics including systemic risk, securitization, credit rating agencies, and financial regulation and has advised several U.S. and foreign governmental agencies on the financial crisis and shadow banking. His writings include Systemic Risk, 97 Georgetown Law Journal 193, the second most cited law review article of 2008; he also has been recognized as the world’s second most cited scholar, 2010-2014 and again 2013-2017, in commercial, contract, and bankruptcy law. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a Founding Member of the International Insolvency Institute, a Fellow of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, Business Law Advisor to the American Bar Association Section on Business Law, a member of P.R.I.M.E. Finance’s Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance, and Senior Fellow of The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Joan L. Larsen is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated by the President on May 8, 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on November 1, 2017. Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Larsen served two terms as a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she was the court’s liaison to Michigan’s drug, sobriety, mental health and veteran’s courts.
Before becoming a judge, Judge Larsen was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was also Special Counsel to the Dean and received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching. Judge Larsen's research and teaching interests included constitutional law, criminal procedure, statutory interpretation, and presidential power. Judge Larsen continues to assist the law school as the adviser to the Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition.
Judge Larsen began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she joined the law firm of Sidley Austin, where she was a member of the Constitutional, Criminal, and Civil Litigation Section. She later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.
Judge Larsen graduated first in her class from Northwestern University School of Law, where she served as articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and earned the John Paul Stevens Award for Academic Excellence. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Northern Iowa.
Chairman & Co-Founder, Cynosure Group
Randal Quarles is Chairman and co-founder of The Cynosure Group. Before founding Cynosure, Mr. Quarles was a long-time partner of the Carlyle Group, where he began the firm’s program of investments in the financial services industry during the 2008 financial crisis.
From October 2017 through October 2021, Mr. Quarles was Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, serving as the system’s first Vice Chairman for Supervision, charged specifically with ensuring stability of the financial sector. He also served as the Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (“FSB”) from December 2018 until December 2021; a global body established after the Great Financial Crisis to coordinate international efforts to enhance financial stability. In both positions, he played a key role in crafting the US and international response to the economic and financial dislocations of COVID-19, successfully preventing widespread global disruption of the financial system. As FSB Chairman, he was a regular delegate to the finance ministers’ meetings of the G-7 and G20 Groups of nations and to the Summit meetings of the G20. As Fed Vice Chair, he was a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets monetary policy for the United States.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Quarles was Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, where he led the Department’s activities in financial sector and capital markets policy, including coordination of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
Before serving as Under Secretary, Mr. Quarles was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, where he had a key role in response to several international crises. Mr. Quarles was also the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, a member of the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, and board representative for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. In earlier public service, he was an integral member of the Treasury team in the George H. W. Bush Administration that developed the governmental response to the savings and loan crisis.
Between his tours of duty in public service, Mr. Quarles was a partner with the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, working at various times in both the New York and London offices, where he was co-head of the firm’s financial institutions practice and advised on transactions that included a number of the largest financial sector mergers ever completed.
Mr. Quarles received an A.B. summa cum laude in philosophy and economics from Columbia in 1981 and a J.D. from the Yale Law School in 1984.
Duke University Law School, Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business
Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business at Duke University and Founding Director of Duke’s interdisciplinary Global Capital Markets Center (now renamed the Global Financial Markets Center). His areas of research and scholarship include insolvency and bankruptcy law, international finance, capital markets, systemic risk, corporate governance, and commercial law. (Links to his scholarship are at http://law.duke.edu/fac/schwarcz/.) He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (summa cum laude) and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, he was a partner at two of the world’s leading law firms and Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School. He also helped to pioneer the field of asset securitization, and his book, Structured Finance, A Guide to the Principles of Asset Securitization (3d edition), is one of the most widely used texts in the field.
Professor Schwarcz has also been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Law, Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, Senior Fellow at The University of Melbourne Law School, Visiting Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen (LMU) Center for Advanced Studies, Guest Professor at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws, Distinguished Honorary Professor, University of Durham Law School, the MacCormick Fellow at The University of Edinburgh School of Law, the Liberty Fellow at the University of Leeds School of Law (scheduled for May-June 2020), and an adviser to the United Nations. He has given numerous endowed or distinguished public lectures, including at The University of Hong Kong, the University of Oxford (the Leverhulme Lectures 2010, available at http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/leverhulme2010.php), Georgetown University Law Center, National University of Singapore, University of Florence, Leiden University, Radboud University Nijmegen, Trinity College Dublin School of Law, and The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. He has served as an expert at meetings of the World Economic Forum. He also has given numerous keynote speeches, including at annual conferences of the European Central Bank, the Corporate Law Teachers Association of Australia, New Zealand, and Asia-Pacific, the National Business Law Scholars Conference (at The University of Chicago Law School), Moody’s Corporation, and the Asian Securitisation Forum.
Additionally, Professor Schwarcz has testified before the U.S. Congress on topics including systemic risk, securitization, credit rating agencies, and financial regulation and has advised several U.S. and foreign governmental agencies on the financial crisis and shadow banking. His writings include Systemic Risk, 97 Georgetown Law Journal 193, the second most cited law review article of 2008; he also has been recognized as the world’s second most cited scholar, 2010-2014 and again 2013-2017, in commercial, contract, and bankruptcy law. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a Founding Member of the International Insolvency Institute, a Fellow of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, Business Law Advisor to the American Bar Association Section on Business Law, a member of P.R.I.M.E. Finance’s Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance, and Senior Fellow of The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and Research Fellow of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. During the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. From 2015-2017 he was Executive Director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.
Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.
Professor Zywicki is also a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and a former Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.”
Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law and one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox & Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Jerry Doyle Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.
Professor Zywicki is former Chairman and a current member of the Board of Directors of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. He formerly served on the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business. He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yorktown University. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and International Law, Order, and Security
Michael Allen, Marshall S. Billingslea, Charles J. Dunlap, Angela Stent, Chad A. Readler
National Lawyers Convention 2022
In February, Russia began a full-scale military action against Ukraine. This war in Ukraine constitutes...
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and International Law, Order, and Security
Michael Allen, Marshall S. Billingslea, Charles J. Dunlap, Chad A. Readler, Angela Stent
National Lawyers Convention 2022
In February, Russia began a full-scale military action against Ukraine. This war in Ukraine constitutes...
Special Session I: Dobbs, Roe, Casey, and the Rule of Law
Lisa Branch, Mary Anne Case, David D. Cole, Sherif Girgis, Carrie Campbell Severino
2022 National Lawyers Convention
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court released a 6-3 decision in Dobbs v....
Special Session I: Dobbs, Roe, Casey, and the Rule of Law
Lisa Branch, Mary Anne Case, David D. Cole, Sherif Girgis, Carrie Campbell Severino
2022 National Lawyers Convention
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court released a 6-3 decision in Dobbs v....
Is Executive Soft Power a Threat to Free Speech?
Enrique Armijo, Mark Chenoweth, Joe Cohn, Michael J. Ellis, Britt C. Grant
2022 National Lawyers Convention
There are no federal speech police, but law enforcement is not the only way that...
Is Executive Soft Power a Threat to Free Speech?
Enrique Armijo, Mark Chenoweth, Joe Cohn, Michael J. Ellis, Britt C. Grant
2022 National Lawyers Convention
There are no federal speech police, but law enforcement is not the only way that...
The Largest Ever Federal Infusion of Broadband Funding: Necessary Investment or Waste of Taxpayer Money?
Shirley Bloomfield, Veneeth Iyengar, Michael O'Rielly, Jeffrey S. Sutton
2022 National Lawyers Convention
While many Americans take broadband access for granted, in certain predominantly rural areas broadband access...
The Largest Ever Federal Infusion of Broadband Funding: Necessary Investment or Waste of Taxpayer Money?
Shirley Bloomfield, Veneeth Iyengar, Michael O'Rielly, Jeffrey S. Sutton
2022 National Lawyers Convention
While many Americans take broadband access for granted, in certain predominantly rural areas broadband access...
Central Bank Digital Currencies: A New Tool for Government Control?
Joan Larsen, Randal K. Quarles, Steven L. Schwarcz, Todd J. Zywicki
2022 National Lawyers Convention
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) are the subject of global debate. While proponents see CBDC...
Central Bank Digital Currencies: A New Tool for Government Control?
Joan Larsen, Randal K. Quarles, Steven L. Schwarcz, Todd J. Zywicki
2022 National Lawyers Convention
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) are the subject of global debate. While proponents see CBDC...