Brian Kemp is a husband, father, businessman, and public servant. On November 6, 2018, he was elected as Georgia's 83rd Governor, earning more votes than any gubernatorial candidate in state history.
Governor Kemp built his first business – Kemp Development and Construction Company – with a pick-up truck and a shovel. Over thirty years later, he is a successful entrepreneur with businesses and investments in banking, farming, timber, manufacturing, and real estate.
Kemp served on the Board of Suncrest Stone in Tifton as a Founding Director of First Madison Bank and St. Mary’s Hospital Board in Athens. From the backhoe to the board room, Governor Kemp understands how to successfully create jobs, grow companies, recruit start-ups, and make deals on the international stage while also providing opportunities for hundreds of hardworking Georgians.
Out of frustration with government, Brian Kemp ran for public office in the early 2000s.
In the State Senate, Kemp was instrumental in fighting to cut fees, taxes, and mandates on job creators and Georgia families. As Secretary of State, Kemp utilized technology and innovation to cut bureaucratic red tape, slash spending, and streamline government.
As Governor, Brian Kemp is fighting to make Georgia #1 for small business through regulatory reform. He will ensure that all parts of our state - including rural Georgia - have opportunities to grow and thrive. Kemp is fundamentally reforming state government, keeping our families safe, and always putting hardworking Georgians first.
Kemp, 56, is married to the former Marty Argo of Athens. They are the proud parents of three daughters – Jarrett, Lucy, and Amy Porter – and active members of Emmanuel Episcopal Church.
Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His law practice covers cybersecurity, data protection, homeland security, and travel and foreign investment regulation; he has been awarded one patent.
Mr. Baker has been General Counsel of the National Security Agency and General Counsel of the commission that investigated WMD intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. He is the author of Skating on Stilts, a book on terrorism, cybersecurity, and other technology issues; he also hosts the weekly Cyberlaw Podcast.
Director, Cybersecurity and Emerging Threats, R Street Institute
Biography
Tatyana Bolton is the Policy Director for R Street’s Cybersecurity & Emerging Threats team. She crafts and oversees the public policy strategy for the department with a focus on secure and competitive markets, data security and data privacy, and diversity in cybersecurity. Other areas of research for the team include cyber metrics, Bureau of Cyber Statistics, content moderation, 5G, building capacity, state and local cybersecurity, and supporting innovation.
Most recently, Tatyana worked as the senior policy director for the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission focusing on U.S. government reorganization and resilience portfolios. From 2017-2020, Tatyana also served at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as the cyber policy lead in the Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans where she developed strategies for strengthening the cybersecurity of our nation’s critical infrastructure. Tatyana’s work included efforts on the Cyber Deterrence Strategy of the United States, the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Strategy and the National Cyber Strategy.
Tatyana has published pieces in Lawfare and Defense News on cybersecurity clinics and women in cybersecurity. She also received an award for exceptionally meritorious service from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
She received a Master of Arts in security studies with a focus on Asian affairs from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service’s Security Studies Program and earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors in political science and theatre from the Ohio State University.
Tatyana lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her family.
President and General Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Biography
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.
John Elwood is the head of Arnold & Porter’s Appellate and Supreme Court practice. He has argued before the Supreme Court nine times, and appeared before most of the federal courts of appeals. He has successfully argued cases across a broad cross-section of subjects, with particular experience in environmental law, the False Claims Act, government contracting, and federal criminal law
Mr. Elwood’s work has earned him recognition as one of Washington’s top Supreme Court lawyers (Washingtonian, 2013), as one of “a small group of lawyers” with an “outsized influence at the U.S. Supreme Court” (Reuters, 2014), and as one of the country’s most innovative lawyers (Financial Times, 2014). Chambers USA reports that “[t]he much-admired John Elwood is praised for his advocacy skills” (2013), and describes Mr. Elwood as “phenomenal” (2014), “incredibly talented” (2012), and “a much-loved and widely respected lawyer who is quick on his feet” (2010).
Before joining the firm, Mr. Elwood served in senior-level positions in the U.S. Department of Justice. Beginning as an Assistant to the Solicitor General, and continuing with the firm, he has briefed more than 20 merits cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, and has briefed approximately 135 cases at the certiorari stage. As the senior Deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel, he advised the White House and federal agencies on a range of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory issues.
Yale Law School, J.D., 1993 (Senior Editor, Yale Law Journal)
King's College, M.A. with distinction, first in class, 1990
Princeton University, A.B. summa cum laude, 1989 (Phi Beta Kappa)
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence; Director, James Madison Program, Princeton University
Biography
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has several times been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds the degrees of J.D. and M.T.S. from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-one honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Bradley Prize, the Irving Kristol Award of the American Enterprise Institute, and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. His books include Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law (both published by Oxford University Press), as well as The Clash of Orthodoxies and Conscience and Its Enemies (both published by ISI Books).
U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (1983-1989); U.S. Solicitor General (1989-1993)
Biography
Kenneth Starr is a former United States Federal Court of Appeals Judge, U.S. Solicitor General, and Independent Counsel. He is the former President and Chancellor of Baylor University where he held the Louise L. Morrison Chair of Constitutional Law at Baylor University Law School.
Speaker Information
Lauren B. Hicks
Of Counsel, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.
Biography
Lauren Hicks devotes the majority of her practice to representing federal contractors and subcontractors in compliance evaluations and administrative enforcement actions triggered by the United States Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
Ms. Hicks counsels employers on the preparation, management, and defense of their affirmative action programs and related matters, including jurisdictional analyses and preventative strategies. She has extensive experience with investigating and resolving systemic discrimination issues stemming from statistical disparities in hiring, compensation, and testing. Ms. Hicks has litigated numerous claims before courts and administrative agencies.
Ms. Hicks most recently served as a District Director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs in the United States Department of Labor. In that role Ms. Hicks oversaw hundreds of OFCCP compliance evaluations, resolving several of the agency’s largest discrimination cases. Prior to her employment with the government, Ms. Hicks litigated a broad spectrum of employment matters on behalf of Plaintiffs, including collective actions.
Professor of Law and Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, University of Miami School of Law
Biography
Mary Anne Franks, Professor of Law and Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on the intersection of civil rights and technology. She teaches classes on criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, family law, and law and technology. Professor Franks is also an Affiliated Faculty member of the University of Miami Department of Philosophy and an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP).
Dr. Franks is the author of the award-winning book, The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). In 2020, she was awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation to support research for her second book, Fearless Speech (expected 2022). Her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. Dr. Franks has also authored numerous articles for the popular press, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. She has delivered more than a hundred lectures to a range of audiences around the world, including law schools, domestic violence organizations, law firms, and tech companies. She was named a member of the American Law Institute in October 2018.
Dr. Franks is the President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating online abuse and discrimination. In 2013, she drafted the first model criminal statute on nonconsensual pornography (sometimes referred to as “revenge porn”), which has served as the template for multiple state laws and for pending federal legislation on the issue. She also served as the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s 2018 Uniform Civil Remedies for the Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act. Dr. Franks is a principal investigator for a 2020 National Science Foundation grant project, COVID-19 and sexual cyberviolence: Impact on general users and vulnerable populations. She regularly advises legislators, tech industry leaders, and advocacy organizations on issues relating to online privacy, sexual exploitation, extortion, harassment, and threats.
Dr. Franks holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School as well as a doctorate and a master’s degree from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law and at Harvard University as a lecturer in social studies and philosophy.
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Biography
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Biography
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Biography
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Legal Director & General Counsel, Criminal Justice Legal Foundation
Biography
Kent S. Scheidegger has been the Legal Director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation since December 1986. He also served as Chairman of the Criminal Law Practice Group of the Federalist Society 2003 to 2005. His articles on criminal and constitutional law have been published in law reviews, national legal publications, and congressional reports. Legal arguments authored by Mr. Scheidegger have been cited and incorporated in several precedent-setting United States Supreme Court decisions.
After receiving a degree in physics with honors from New Mexico State University in 1976, Mr. Scheidegger served for six years in the United States Air Force as a Nuclear Research Officer. He took his law degree with distinction from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1982 and practiced civil law in Northern California. He was general counsel of California Cooler, Inc. from 1984 until 1986, when he joined the Foundation.
B.S., New Mexico State University
J.D., University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law
Brendan Carr is the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He previously served as the senior Republican Commissioner and as the FCC’s General Counsel. Nominated by both President Trump and President Biden, Carr has been confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.
Described by Axios as “the FCC’s 5G crusader,” Carr has led the FCC’s work to modernize its infrastructure rules and accelerate the buildout of high-speed networks. His reforms cut billions of dollars in red tape, enabled the private sector to construct high-speed networks in communities across the country, and extended America’s global leadership in 5G.
Chairman Carr is also focused on expanding America’s skilled workforce—the tower climbers and construction crews needed to build next-gen networks. His jobs initiative promotes community colleges and apprenticeships as a pipeline for good-paying 5G jobs. He is recognizing America’s talented tower crews through a series of “5G Ready” Hard Hat presentations.
Chairman Carr leads a groundbreaking telehealth initiative at the FCC. The Connected Care Pilot Program supports the delivery of high-quality care to low-income Americans and veterans.
Chairman Carr’s time outside of Washington helps inform his approach to the job. He regularly hits the road to hear directly from community members and learn how changes in federal policies could help improve their lives.
Chairman Carr brings nearly 20 years of private and public sector experience in communications and tech policy to his position. Before joining the FCC as a staffer back in 2012, he worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP in the firm’s appellate, litigation, and telecom practices. Previously, Chairman Carr clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis Shedd. After attending Georgetown University for his undergrad, Chairman Carr earned his J.D. magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law where he served as an editor of the Catholic University Law Review.
Randolph J. May is Founder and President of The Free State Foundation. The Free State Foundation is an independent, non-profit free market-oriented think tank founded in 2006.
From October 1999-May 2006, May was a Senior Fellow and Director of Communications Policy Studies at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. Prior to joining PFF, he practiced communications, administrative, and regulatory law as a partner at major national law firms. From 1978 to 1981, May served as Assistant General Counsel and Associate General Counsel at the Federal Communication Commission.
May has held numerous leadership positions in bar associations. He is a past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Mr. May also has served as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and currently is a Senior Fellow at ACUS.
Mr. May has published more than two hundred articles and essays on communications, administrative and constitutional law topics. He is author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform, and co-author of #CommActUpdate: A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age and The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property. Mr. May is editor of two books, Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years and New Directions in Communications Policy. In addition, he is the co-editor of two other books, Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform. In the past, Mr. May has written regular columns on legal and regulatory affairs for Legal Times and the National Law Journal, leading national legal periodicals.
He received his A.B. from Duke University and his J.D. from Duke Law School, where he serves as a member of the Board of Visitors.
Mitchel joined DBL Law as a partner in its Louisville office in 2018. Mitchel’s wide range of experience makes him a sought-after attorney and advisor. He uses this experience to advise his client on a wide variety of legal issues. Mitchel primarily focusses in the firm’s Health Care, Administrative Law, Civil Litigation, and Government practice groups. His health care practice focusses on items ranging from Stark and Anti-kickback analysis and defense to mergers and asset purchase arrangements. In the administrative law and civil litigation realm, Mitchel represents numerous entities before various administrative agencies and handles administrative appeals in Kentucky Courts. He also represents entities in employment litigation and other civil litigation in both federal and state courts. Mitchel also regularly advises clients on matters ranging from open records/FOIA disputes, election law, and white collar crime.
Prior to joining the firm, Mitchel was the Assistant Deputy Attorney General in the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General. In that role, he supervised nearly every division in the office, handling the most sensitive and high profile matters. These matters included successful challenges to the Kentucky Governor’s executive authority, litigation involving Environmental Protection Agency regulations, and the prosecution of numerous state and local officials. On the administrative and civil side, Mitchel also oversaw the divisions which enforce non-profit organizations, election laws, environmental law, Medicaid fraud, open records laws, utility rate making, On the criminal side, Mitchel supervised investigations, prosecutions, and appeals of Kentucky’s criminal laws.
As part of his work at the Attorney General’s Office Mitchel advised various Kentucky agencies related to the promulgation of administrative regulations, including co-authoring the controlled substance prescribing standards and the pain clinic regulations. Mitchel served at the Attorney General’s designee on various boards and advised other boards and commissions on matters ranging from constitutional and statutory compliance to personnel matters.
Mitchel has also served as the Executive Director of Medicaid Fraud Control Unit where he led litigation involving pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers, obtaining multi-million dollar settlements for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. During his time supervising this division, it collected approximately $300 Million for the Commonwealth. He also previously served as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney in Jefferson County, the state’s largest jurisdiction, prosecuting felony crimes on behalf of the Commonwealth. Working with federal and state law enforcement, he focused on large-scale criminal syndications, including handling what is still the largest criminal syndication case in Kentucky history.
Mitchel is admitted to practice law in Kentucky, the Kentucky Eastern and Western Districts, the Sixth Circuit, the DC Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. Mitchel has argued cases before numerous federal and state courts and the Kentucky Supreme Court.
Mitchel is a proud 2019 graduate of Leadership Kentucky. He an active member of the Louisville community, serving on the Board of Directors for the Louisville Regional Airport Authority, Treasurer of the Norton Children’s Hospital Foundation, and volunteer with the Bluegrass Center for Autism. He resides in Louisville with his wife and three children.
Oliver Dunford joined the Pacific Legal Foundation in March 2017. He litigates across the country to defend and advance individual liberty and the rule of law. Oliver’s cases involve the separation of powers, economic liberty, property rights, and the First Amendment.
Oliver remains inspired by the Classical Liberal ideals upon which our Founders declared independence and secured the blessings of liberty. The Constitution’s promises, however, are not self-executing. As James Madison explained, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Oliver feels lucky that his work helps oblige the government to control itself—to the end that all individuals may pursue their rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Before joining PLF, Oliver clerked at the Ohio Supreme Court and the Ohio Court of Appeals, and spent more than a decade in private practice working on complex commercial litigation. Originally from Cleveland, Oliver is a graduate of the University of Dayton and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, where he was a managing editor for the Cleveland State Law Review. Oliver is admitted to the state bars of Florida, California, and Ohio, as well as several federal courts including the United States Supreme Court.
Oliver spends all of his free time following the Cleveland Indians.