President, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies
Lawrence J. Spiwak is President of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that studies broad public-policy issues related to governance, social and economic conditions, with a particular emphasis on the law and economics of the digital age. Mr. Spiwak is a prolific scholar whose work is frequently cited by policymakers, major news media and academic journals around the world, and is in the top 1.3%of authors downloaded on the Social Science Research Network. Mr. Spiwak currently serves as the co-chair of the Federal Communications Bar Association’s (FCBA) committee responsible for overseeing the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL and is a member of the program committee of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (“TPRC”). Mr. Spiwak is also the recipient of the FCBA’s Distinguished Service Award. Prior to joining the Phoenix Center, Mr. Spiwak was a Senior Attorney with the Competition Division in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel from 1994-1998. While in college, Mr. Spiwak was accepted into the Presidential Stay-In School program where he was responsible for delivering classified and confidential material among senior White House and Reagan Administration officials and received a full FBI security clearance. Mr. Spiwak received his B.A. with Special Honors from the George Washington University and his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Mr. Spiwak is a member in good standing of the bars of New York, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
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.
Partner, Antitrust and Competition, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Maureen Ohlhausen is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she advises industry-leading clients on complex antitrust and litigation matters, with a focus on high-profile cases. Sought after for her depth of experience on antitrust and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)-related issues, Maureen is known for her relationships with officials in the U.S. and abroad.
After finishing law school and clerking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Maureen joined the FTC in 1997. She held a series of roles at the agency over the next 12 years, rising to the position of Director of the FTC Office of Policy Planning, where she led the agency’s work on e-commerce and headed the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force, which produced an influential report analyzing competition and consumer protection legal issues in the broadband and internet sectors. She then went into private practice at a leading telecommunications law firm, where she headed the FTC practice group.
In 2012, Maureen was confirmed by the Senate as a Commissioner of the FTC and was appointed Acting Chairman in January 2017, a role she held until May 2018. As Acting Chairman, Maureen directed all aspects of the agency’s antitrust work, including merger review, conduct enforcement, and all consumer protection enforcement, with an emphasis on privacy and technology issues. Under her leadership, the FTC won several influential merger challenges in court and reached a number of key digital privacy settlements.
To date, Maureen is the only FTC Commissioner to have received the Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions to the FTC.
Following the end of her term at the FTC, and immediately prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Maureen was chair of the global antitrust and competition practice at Baker Botts, based in that firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
A recognized thought leader, Maureen is a frequent author and speaker, and is often quoted by leading print and broadcast media on antitrust, FTC, and privacy and data security matters. She has published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, FTC litigation, telecommunications, and international law issues in prestigious publications. During her tenure at the FTC and in private practice, she testified more than two dozen times before Congress, including before the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Antitrust Sub-Committee. She also testified before the Antitrust Modernization Commission.
H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics, Clemson College of Business
Thomas Hazlett is the Hugh H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics at Clemson University. He has previously held faculty positions at George Mason University, the University of California, Davis, and the Wharton School, and served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission. A noted expert in regulatory economics and information markets, his research has appeared in academic forums such as the Journal of Law & Economics, RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Financial Economics, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the Columbia Law Review. He has also written for such popular periodicals as the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Slate, the N.Y. Times, N.Y. Daily News, Reuters.com, Business Week, The New Republic and the Financial Times. His most recent book, The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone, (Yale, 2017), was featured as one of the top tech books of the year at CES 2018.
Denver Managing Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP
Raymond L. Gifford counsels communications, electric and gas utilities, and information technology companies on state and federal aspects of regulation, administrative law, and competition policy. He is an expert in public utilities law, and the law and economics of regulation of network industries. Mr. Gifford’s law and policy work focuses on the convergence of broadband communications and energy, as well as environmental policy as it applies to the electric industry. He represents clients in state and federal courts and agencies, and serves as an expert witness on utility regulation and its history. He is also a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship, and Co-Directs the Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics at University of Colorado Law School.
Mr. Gifford served as Chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission from 1999-2003. Following that, he served as President of The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington DC-based think-tank that studied the digital revolution as it relates to regulation of network industries. He entered the regulatory law world as First Assistant Attorney General in the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. He clerked for the Honorable Richard P. Matsch of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. Mr. Gifford has authored a number of articles on communications law, public utility regulation and competition policy in network industries. He is a graduate of University of Chicago Law School and St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute
A Change in Direction for the Federal Trade Commission?
Lawrence J. Spiwak
While antitrust and regulation are supposed to be two sides of the same coin,[1] there...
How to Regulate the Internet
Kathleen Q. Abernathy
Note from the Editor: This article traces the history of the FCC’s approach to regulating...
Net Neutrality vs. Net Reality: Why an Evidence-Based Approach to Enforcement, And Not More Regulation, Could Protect Innovation on the Web
Maureen K. Ohlhausen
Related Links: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Hearing on “Network Neutrality” (testimony of...
Allocating Radio Spectrum for the "Mobile Data Tsunami"
Thomas Hazlett
I. A Mobile Data Tsunami? The mobile sector is said to face a looming spectrum...
Introducing Julius Genachowski, Nominee for FCC Chairman
Raymond L. Gifford
Brought to you by the Telecommunications & Electronic Media Practice Group On March 3, 2009, President Obama formally announced...