Director of Asian Studies and Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Dan Blumenthal is the director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade. From 2001 to 2004, he served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Department of Defense. Additionally, he served as a commissioner on the congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2006-2012, and held the position of vice chairman in 2007. He has also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Mr. Blumenthal is the co-author of “An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century” (AEI Press, November 2012).
Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies; Director, Korea-Pacific Program, School of Global Policy & Strategy, UC San Diego
Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies, director of the Korea-Pacific Program, and distinguished professor of political science at GPS. He is a go-to expert on current developments in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly the Korean peninsula, and on the politics of economic reform and globalization.
Prof. Haggard has written extensively on the political economy of North Korea with Marcus Noland, including “Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform” (2007) and “Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea” (2011) and co-authors the "North Korea: Witness to Transformation" blog at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Prof. Haggard is the current editor of the Journal of East Asian Studies and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Senior Research Fellow, Northeast Asia, The Heritage Foundation
Bruce Klingner specializes in Korean and Japanese affairs as the senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center.
Mr. Klingner’s analysis and writing about North Korea, South Korea and Japan, as well as related issues, are informed by his 20 years of service at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Klingner, who joined Heritage in 2007, has testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
He is a frequent commentator in U.S. and foreign media. His articles and commentary have appeared in major American and foreign publications and he is a regular guest on broadcast and cable news outlets. He is a regular contributor to the international and security sections of The Daily Signal.
From 1996 to 2001, Mr. Klingner was CIA’s deputy division chief for Korea, responsible for the analysis of political, military, economic and leadership issues for the president of the United States and other senior U.S. policymakers. In 1993-1994, he was the chief of CIA's Korea branch, which analyzed military developments during a nuclear crisis with North Korea.
Mr. Klingner is a distinguished graduate of the National War College, where he received a master's degree in national security strategy in 2002. He also holds a master's degree in strategic intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College and a bachelor's degree in political science from Middlebury College in Vermont.
He is active in Korean martial arts, attaining third-degree black belt in taekwondo and first-degree black belt in hapkido and teuk kong moo sool.
Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law and Faculty Director of International Programs, Hofstra University School of Law
Professor Ku’s primary research interest is the relationship of international law to constitutional law. He has also conducted academic research on a wide range of topics including international dispute resolution, international criminal law, and China’s relationship with international law. He teaches courses such as U.S. constitutional law, U.S. foreign affairs law, transnational law, and international trade and business law. Since 2014, he has served as the faculty director of international programs, overseeing Hofstra Law’s study abroad, exchange and LL.M. programs. Professor Ku also teaches Constitutional Law in our online degree programs: Master of Laws in American Law and Master of Arts in American Legal Studies. He has also been selected as the John DeWitt Gregory Research Scholar and as a Hofstra Law Research Fellow. He is a member of the American Law Institute.
He is the co-author, with John Yoo, of Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order (Oxford University Press 2012). He also has published more than 40 law review articles, book chapters and symposia essays. He has given dozens of academic lectures and workshops at major universities and conferences in the United States, Europe and Asia.
He co-founded the leading international law weblog Opinio Juris, which is read daily by thousands worldwide. His essays and op-eds have been published in major news publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the NYTimes.com. He has been frequently interviewed for television news programs and quoted in print and electronic media. He has also signed or submitted amicus briefs to national and international courts and served as an expert witness in both domestic and international proceedings.
Before joining the Hofstra Law faculty, Professor Ku served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and as an Olin Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Virginia Law School. Professor Ku also practiced as an associate at the New York City law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, specializing in litigation and arbitration arising out of international disputes. He has been a visiting professor at the College of William & Mary Marshall- Wythe School of Law in Williamsburg, Virginia; a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Law at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, China; and a Taiwan Fellow at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan. He is a member of the New York Bar and a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.
President, Students for Fair Admissions
Edward Blum is the president of Students for Fair Admissions, a membership organization whose mission is to eliminate racial and ethnic classifications and preferences in school admissions. Shortly after SFFA’s inception in 2014, the group challenged in federal court the racial admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In 2023, the United States Supreme Court struck down the use of race as an admissions factor at all colleges and universities.
He is the president of the newly formed American Alliance for Equal Rights which has filed over a dozen lawsuits challenging the use of race by corporations, law firms, venture capital firms and cultural institutions. Mr. Blum also serves as the President of the Project on Fair Representation, a nonprofit legal foundation formed in 2005 that has provided counsel in a number of race-related U.S. Supreme Court cases including, Shelby Co. Alabama v. Holder, Fisher v. University of Texas (I and II) and Evenwel v. Abbott.
Since 2005, Blum has been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he studies legal and policy issues relating to race and ethnicity. He is the author of a book on the Voting Rights Act, numerous essays and law review articles, and is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and National Review, among others.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
Chair, Global Antitrust Law Practice Group, Morrison Foerster
Alex Okuliar is Co-Chair of Morrison Foerster’s Global Antitrust Law Practice Group. He is the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Antitrust Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Justice and a former advisor at the Federal Trade Commission.
Alex’s practice spans merger review, civil litigation, and criminal investigations. Over his twenty-five-year career, Alex has worked on nearly one thousand deals. He has deep experience guiding clients through the complex global merger clearance process and has litigated agency merger challenges through trial. He has also helped clients succeed in a wide range of federal and state cases, including class actions and private party disputes alleging price fixing, monopolization, group boycotts, market allocation, and tying. His understanding of the agency processes from the inside allows him to offer expert, timely, and practical advice to clients navigating merger and conduct investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, state Attorneys General, and foreign agencies. Alex’s work has been recognized by leading industry publications such as Chambers, The Legal 500 U.S., and Global Competition Review.
Outside of client work, Alex is a prolific thought leader and was recognized as a 2024 Top Author for Antitrust & Trade Regulation by JD Supra’s Readers’ Choice Awards. He currently serves as the co-chair of the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s Joint Conduct Committee and is the former chair of the Section’s Intellectual Property Committee and co-chair of the 2023 Antitrust Fall Forum on Artificial Intelligence. He is also a member of the Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Executive Committee of The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Before law school, Alex co-founded and sold an online technology company. Alex received his B.S. in economics and B.A. with distinction in history from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School.
Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Paul S. Atkins was sworn into office as the 34th Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21, 2025, after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 9, 2025.
Prior to returning to the SEC, Chairman Atkins was most recently chief executive of Patomak Global Partners, a company he founded in 2009. Chairman Atkins helped lead efforts to develop best practices for the digital asset sector. He served as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board of BATS Global Markets, Inc. from 2012 to 2015.
Chairman Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a Commissioner of the SEC from 2002 to 2008. During his tenure, he advocated for transparency, consistency, and the use of cost-benefit analysis at the agency. Chairman Atkins also represented the SEC at meetings of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Economic Council. From 2009 to 2010, he was appointed a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Before serving as an SEC Commissioner, Chairman Atkins was a consultant on securities and investment management industry matters, especially regarding issues of strategy, regulatory compliance, risk management, new product development, and organizational control.
From 1990 to 1994, Chairman Atkins served on the staff of two chairmen of the SEC, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt, ultimately as chief of staff and counselor, respectively. He received the SEC’s 1992 Law and Policy Award for work regarding corporate governance matters.
Chairman Atkins began his career as a lawyer in New York, focusing on a wide range of corporate transactions for U.S. and foreign clients, including public and private securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He was resident for 2½ years in his firm's Paris office and admitted as conseil juridique in France.
A member of the New York and Florida bars, Chairman Atkins received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1983 and was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Wofford College in 1980.
Originally from Lillington, North Carolina, Chairman Atkins grew up in Tampa, Florida. He and his wife Sarah have three sons.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
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Richard J. Sullivan was sworn in as a United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit in October 2018. Before that, Judge Sullivan served for eleven years as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Prior to becoming a judge, he served as the General Counsel and Managing Director of Marsh Inc., the world's leading risk management and insurance brokerage firm. From 1994 to 2005, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was Chief of the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit and Director of the New York/New Jersey Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. In 2003, he was awarded the Henry L. Stimson Medal from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In 1998, he was named the Federal Law Enforcement Association's Prosecutor of the Year. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he was a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and a law clerk to the Honorable David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, the College of William & Mary, and Chaminade High School on Long Island. From 1986 to 1987, he served as a New York City Urban Fellow under New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. Judge Sullivan is on the executive board of the New York American Inn of Court and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on sentencing and jurisprudence, and he previously served as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he taught courses on white collar crime and trial advocacy and was named Adjunct Professor of the Year.
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Senior Fellow, Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy Studies and is co-director of AEI’s program on Financial Policy Studies. Prior to joining AEI, he practiced banking, corporate and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. Mr. Wallison has held a number of government positions. From June 1981 to January 1985, he was General Counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan Administration's proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan, and between 1972 and 1976, he served first as Special Assistant to New York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller as vice president of the United States.
Mr. Wallison was admitted to practice before the courts of New York and the District of Columbia, and is retired from practice in New York. He continues to be a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1963 and law degree from Harvard Law School in 1966.
Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press. On campaign finance, he is the author (with Joel Gora) of Better Parties, Better Government, (AEI Press 2009). On financial or regulatory matters, he is the author of Back From the Brink, a proposal for a private deposit insurance system, and co-author of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Internet Age; Competitive Equity: A Better Way to Organize Mutual Funds; Bad History, Worse Policy: How a False Narrative about the Financial Crisis Led to the Dodd-Frank Act (AEI Press 2013); and Hidden In Plain Sight: What Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why it Could Happen Again (Encounter Books 2015). His most recent book is Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein in the Administrative State, published by Encounter Books in October 2018.
He testifies frequently before committees of Congress, and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and other print and online journals. He has also been a speaker at many conferences on financial services, housing, the causes of the financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act, accounting, and corporate governance, and was a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee between 1995 and 2015. He was a member of the SEC Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (2008), co-Chair of the Pew Financial Reform Task Force (2009), and a member of the congressionally- appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009-2011). In May 2011, for his work in financial policy, Mr. Wallison received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Colorado.
Kathleen Q. Abernathy recently returned to Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP as special counsel. She was previously elected to the Board of Directors of Frontier Communications as an independent director in 2006 following her term as a Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2005. In 2010 she joined the company as Chief Legal Officer and Executive Vice President, Regulatory and Governmental Affairs. Prior to her term as an FCC Commissioner, Ms. Abernathy worked for a number of different telecommunications companies and law firms. She has received numerous awards in recognition of her professional accomplishments and has taught as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. She received her B.S. from Marquette University and her J.D. from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.
Senior Vice President, Federal Government Relations, Verizon
Joining Verizon in 2005, Mr. Fisher currently serves as Senior Vice President of Federal Government Relations. He manages Verizon's advocacy and relations in the United States Congress, the Administration and the company's interaction with over two dozen state and local groups such as the National Governors Association, National Conference of Mayors, and the National Council of State Legislators. He is also responsible for overseeing Verizon’s federal, state and local tax policy advocacy. In this position, he coordinates Verizon's overall legislative and Administration strategy, implementation and policy development relating to a wide range of telecommunications and business issues that impact the company. Mr. Fisher is also Vice-Chairman of Verizon’s Political Action Committee.
Before joining Verizon, Mr. Fisher was Director of Government Affairs for Clear Channel Communications (now iHeart Media). Joining Clear Channel in 2003, Mr. Fisher assisted with the opening of Clear Channel’s Washington, DC office and helped establish the company’s public policy positions on a number of broadcasting related issues before Congress.
From 1997-2003, Mr. Fisher served on the staff of United States Senator John McCain. He served as a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee where he worked on the Subcommittee on Communications. In this role, Mr. Fisher advised then Chairman McCain on a wide-range of telecommunications issues that included: wireline, wireless, cable, satellite, broadcasting, and high tech. He also advised the staff of other Members of the Committee and assisted with the drafting of major telecommunications legislation.
Prior to working on the Senate Commerce Committee, Mr. Fisher served on the personal staff of Senator McCain’s office in Phoenix, AZ. As Legislative Liaison, Mr. Fisher worked closely with city, county, and statewide elected officials on federal policy that affected Arizona and its localities. Before working in the Senator’s state office, Mr. Fisher worked on Senator McCain’s 1998 reelection campaign where he helped coordinate grassroots efforts, get out the vote program and fundraising.
Mr. Fisher is also a veteran of political campaigns having served as a campaign manager for a Republican Congressional candidate and as a consultant to various local and statewide campaigns in Arizona. He has also served as an informal policy advisor to three Republican Presidential campaigns.
Mr. Fisher is on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, a member of the U.S. Chamber Public Affairs Council and an alumni of the American Council on Germany. Outside of the office, Mr. Fisher and his wife are co-founders of a Virginia 501(c)(3) non-profit called Operation Christmas Hope which serves underprivileged families in Alexandria. He also co-founded the Multiple Myeloma Charity Classic, a charity golf event that has raised over $1,000,000 in the last 7 years for Multiple Myeloma cancer research. Robert and his family attend Christ the King Church in Alexandria where he a member of the Finance Committee. Mr. Fisher, his wife Rebecca Fisher, and their two children, Savannah and Cole, reside in Alexandria, VA. Robert graduated from Arizona State University in 1997 with a B.A. in Political Science.
Executive Director, National Consumers League
Sally Greenberg joined the National Consumers League as Executive Director on October 1, 2007. The League’s focus is on five key priority areas: fraud, child labor, LifeSmarts, health care, especially the safe use of medications and medication adherence, and food safety and nutrition. Ms. Greenberg has testified numerous times before Congress on consumer protection issues, including on product safety, fraud, excessive fees on car rentals, consumer rip-offs in calling cards and in support of protections for farmworker children. Ms. Greenberg is our primary spokesperson on a variety of issues.
Ms. Greenberg came to NCL from Consumers Union, where she worked from 1997-2007 on product liability and food safety issues, along with auto and product safety. Previously, Ms. Greenberg worked at the U.S. Department of Justice Foreign Claims Settlement Commission and prior to that, she spent a decade serving as the Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, based in Boston.
Ms. Greenberg was president of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts and the Women’s Bar Foundation, and served on several gubernatorial commissions in Massachusetts. Ms. Greenberg served for many years on the board of directors of the Alliance for Justice, and HALT, an organization whose mission is the protection of the rights of consumers in their interactions with lawyers and the legal system. Ms. Greenberg is a member of the Reagan-Udall Foundation Board, a nonprofit established by Congress to support the mission of the FDA and help equip the agency with the highest caliber regulatory science and technology. She also serves on the board of the Keystone Center, which helps leaders in health, energy, environment and education battle contentious issues with a consensus-based approach. Ms. Greenberg also served for over a decade on the board of directors of Trillium Asset Management, the oldest and largest investment management firm dedicated to socially responsible investing.
Visiting Fellow, Center for Internet, Communications, and Techno, American Enterprise Institute
Bret Swanson is a visiting fellow at AEI’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy and president of Entropy Economics LLC, a strategic research firm specializing in technology, innovation, and the global economy. He advises investors and technology companies, focusing on the Internet ecosystem and the broadband networks and applications that drive it. Mr. Swanson is also a scholar at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, where, since 2005, his research has centered on economic growth and policies that encourage it. For eight years Mr. Swanson advised technology investors as executive editor of the Gilder Technology Report and later was a senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, where he directed the Center for Global Innovation. Mr. Swanson began his career as an aide to former senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) and was then an economic analyst for former representative Jack Kemp (R-NY) at Empower America.
Legal Director, The Center for the Rights of Abused Children
Tim Keller is a lawyer who works to ensure all abused and abandoned children are safe and have access to their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
As senior vice president and legal director at the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, Tim’s public interest legal work seeks to defend the constitutional rights of children to be safe from abuse, to prompt timely placement with permanent parents, and to assure a child’s representation by legal counsel. In addition to constitutional litigation, Tim oversees the lawyers in the Center for the Rights of Abused Children’s one-of-a-kind pro bono Children’s Law Clinic and guides its policy initiatives.
When he and his wife, Lisa, hosted a teenage exchange student from Brazil several years ago, they realized how much they enjoyed helping a child thrive. The two felt called to help more kids. Over the following years, Tim and Lisa would become foster parents. Today, they enjoy offering respite care for children in foster care.
Intensely motivated by his time fostering children who’d been abused and neglected, Tim sees his work to ensure children have a constitutional right to counsel as a matter of life and death. As such, he’s particularly proud that in 2021 the Center for the Rights of Abused Children secured the rights of all children in Arizona’s foster system to be represented by legal counsel.
Before joining the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, Tim worked for nearly 20 years at the Institute for Justice. He served as lead counsel in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, a U.S. Supreme Court victory that protected Arizona’s pioneering school scholarship program. Tim also led the team that secured a U.S. Supreme Court victory in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which prevents states from discriminating against religious families and schools in educational choice programs. He has also litigated economic liberty and property rights cases in state and federal courts.
Tim earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Arizona State University. He clerked for Robert D. Myers, at the time the presiding judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, and for Ann A. Scott Timmer on the Arizona Court of Appeals.
Tim and Lisa live in Chandler, Ariz., with their four sons, Daniel, Benjamin, Ethan and Noah, and a miniature schnauzer named Gus who has more than 12,000 Instagram followers. The Kellers have traveled to 49 of the 50 United States, and are always looking for recommendations for new card or board games for family game nights.
President, Students for Fair Admissions
Edward Blum is the president of Students for Fair Admissions, a membership organization whose mission is to eliminate racial and ethnic classifications and preferences in school admissions. Shortly after SFFA’s inception in 2014, the group challenged in federal court the racial admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In 2023, the United States Supreme Court struck down the use of race as an admissions factor at all colleges and universities.
He is the president of the newly formed American Alliance for Equal Rights which has filed over a dozen lawsuits challenging the use of race by corporations, law firms, venture capital firms and cultural institutions. Mr. Blum also serves as the President of the Project on Fair Representation, a nonprofit legal foundation formed in 2005 that has provided counsel in a number of race-related U.S. Supreme Court cases including, Shelby Co. Alabama v. Holder, Fisher v. University of Texas (I and II) and Evenwel v. Abbott.
Since 2005, Blum has been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he studies legal and policy issues relating to race and ethnicity. He is the author of a book on the Voting Rights Act, numerous essays and law review articles, and is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and National Review, among others.
Chair, Global Antitrust Law Practice Group, Morrison Foerster
Alex Okuliar is Co-Chair of Morrison Foerster’s Global Antitrust Law Practice Group. He is the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Antitrust Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Justice and a former advisor at the Federal Trade Commission.
Alex’s practice spans merger review, civil litigation, and criminal investigations. Over his twenty-five-year career, Alex has worked on nearly one thousand deals. He has deep experience guiding clients through the complex global merger clearance process and has litigated agency merger challenges through trial. He has also helped clients succeed in a wide range of federal and state cases, including class actions and private party disputes alleging price fixing, monopolization, group boycotts, market allocation, and tying. His understanding of the agency processes from the inside allows him to offer expert, timely, and practical advice to clients navigating merger and conduct investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, state Attorneys General, and foreign agencies. Alex’s work has been recognized by leading industry publications such as Chambers, The Legal 500 U.S., and Global Competition Review.
Outside of client work, Alex is a prolific thought leader and was recognized as a 2024 Top Author for Antitrust & Trade Regulation by JD Supra’s Readers’ Choice Awards. He currently serves as the co-chair of the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s Joint Conduct Committee and is the former chair of the Section’s Intellectual Property Committee and co-chair of the 2023 Antitrust Fall Forum on Artificial Intelligence. He is also a member of the Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Executive Committee of The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Before law school, Alex co-founded and sold an online technology company. Alex received his B.S. in economics and B.A. with distinction in history from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
Kathleen Q. Abernathy recently returned to Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP as special counsel. She was previously elected to the Board of Directors of Frontier Communications as an independent director in 2006 following her term as a Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2005. In 2010 she joined the company as Chief Legal Officer and Executive Vice President, Regulatory and Governmental Affairs. Prior to her term as an FCC Commissioner, Ms. Abernathy worked for a number of different telecommunications companies and law firms. She has received numerous awards in recognition of her professional accomplishments and has taught as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. She received her B.S. from Marquette University and her J.D. from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.
Senior Vice President, Federal Government Relations, Verizon
Joining Verizon in 2005, Mr. Fisher currently serves as Senior Vice President of Federal Government Relations. He manages Verizon's advocacy and relations in the United States Congress, the Administration and the company's interaction with over two dozen state and local groups such as the National Governors Association, National Conference of Mayors, and the National Council of State Legislators. He is also responsible for overseeing Verizon’s federal, state and local tax policy advocacy. In this position, he coordinates Verizon's overall legislative and Administration strategy, implementation and policy development relating to a wide range of telecommunications and business issues that impact the company. Mr. Fisher is also Vice-Chairman of Verizon’s Political Action Committee.
Before joining Verizon, Mr. Fisher was Director of Government Affairs for Clear Channel Communications (now iHeart Media). Joining Clear Channel in 2003, Mr. Fisher assisted with the opening of Clear Channel’s Washington, DC office and helped establish the company’s public policy positions on a number of broadcasting related issues before Congress.
From 1997-2003, Mr. Fisher served on the staff of United States Senator John McCain. He served as a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee where he worked on the Subcommittee on Communications. In this role, Mr. Fisher advised then Chairman McCain on a wide-range of telecommunications issues that included: wireline, wireless, cable, satellite, broadcasting, and high tech. He also advised the staff of other Members of the Committee and assisted with the drafting of major telecommunications legislation.
Prior to working on the Senate Commerce Committee, Mr. Fisher served on the personal staff of Senator McCain’s office in Phoenix, AZ. As Legislative Liaison, Mr. Fisher worked closely with city, county, and statewide elected officials on federal policy that affected Arizona and its localities. Before working in the Senator’s state office, Mr. Fisher worked on Senator McCain’s 1998 reelection campaign where he helped coordinate grassroots efforts, get out the vote program and fundraising.
Mr. Fisher is also a veteran of political campaigns having served as a campaign manager for a Republican Congressional candidate and as a consultant to various local and statewide campaigns in Arizona. He has also served as an informal policy advisor to three Republican Presidential campaigns.
Mr. Fisher is on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, a member of the U.S. Chamber Public Affairs Council and an alumni of the American Council on Germany. Outside of the office, Mr. Fisher and his wife are co-founders of a Virginia 501(c)(3) non-profit called Operation Christmas Hope which serves underprivileged families in Alexandria. He also co-founded the Multiple Myeloma Charity Classic, a charity golf event that has raised over $1,000,000 in the last 7 years for Multiple Myeloma cancer research. Robert and his family attend Christ the King Church in Alexandria where he a member of the Finance Committee. Mr. Fisher, his wife Rebecca Fisher, and their two children, Savannah and Cole, reside in Alexandria, VA. Robert graduated from Arizona State University in 1997 with a B.A. in Political Science.
Executive Director, National Consumers League
Sally Greenberg joined the National Consumers League as Executive Director on October 1, 2007. The League’s focus is on five key priority areas: fraud, child labor, LifeSmarts, health care, especially the safe use of medications and medication adherence, and food safety and nutrition. Ms. Greenberg has testified numerous times before Congress on consumer protection issues, including on product safety, fraud, excessive fees on car rentals, consumer rip-offs in calling cards and in support of protections for farmworker children. Ms. Greenberg is our primary spokesperson on a variety of issues.
Ms. Greenberg came to NCL from Consumers Union, where she worked from 1997-2007 on product liability and food safety issues, along with auto and product safety. Previously, Ms. Greenberg worked at the U.S. Department of Justice Foreign Claims Settlement Commission and prior to that, she spent a decade serving as the Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, based in Boston.
Ms. Greenberg was president of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts and the Women’s Bar Foundation, and served on several gubernatorial commissions in Massachusetts. Ms. Greenberg served for many years on the board of directors of the Alliance for Justice, and HALT, an organization whose mission is the protection of the rights of consumers in their interactions with lawyers and the legal system. Ms. Greenberg is a member of the Reagan-Udall Foundation Board, a nonprofit established by Congress to support the mission of the FDA and help equip the agency with the highest caliber regulatory science and technology. She also serves on the board of the Keystone Center, which helps leaders in health, energy, environment and education battle contentious issues with a consensus-based approach. Ms. Greenberg also served for over a decade on the board of directors of Trillium Asset Management, the oldest and largest investment management firm dedicated to socially responsible investing.
Visiting Fellow, Center for Internet, Communications, and Techno, American Enterprise Institute
Bret Swanson is a visiting fellow at AEI’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy and president of Entropy Economics LLC, a strategic research firm specializing in technology, innovation, and the global economy. He advises investors and technology companies, focusing on the Internet ecosystem and the broadband networks and applications that drive it. Mr. Swanson is also a scholar at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, where, since 2005, his research has centered on economic growth and policies that encourage it. For eight years Mr. Swanson advised technology investors as executive editor of the Gilder Technology Report and later was a senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, where he directed the Center for Global Innovation. Mr. Swanson began his career as an aide to former senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) and was then an economic analyst for former representative Jack Kemp (R-NY) at Empower America.
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