Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications, Penn State University
Dr. Christopher Ali is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and a full professor of telecommunications in the Bellisario College. He is also an affiliate faculty with the College of Information, Science and Technology (IST) at Penn State. He holds a Ph.D. in communication studies from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania (2013). His research interests include media and telecommunications policy and regulation, broadband policy, critical political economy, critical geography, comparative media systems, qualitative research methods, media localism, and local news.
Ali uses critical, qualitative methods to research broadband policy, planning, deployment and digital equity in the United States. Presently, he has a series of projects dedicated to “broadband stories,” where he is researching how community-based stories can influence public policy. These projects form the basis of his forthcoming book, Where the wires end: Stories from the Digital Divide to be published in Spring 2027 with the University of Chicago Press. In 2026, Dr. Ali also completed a major grant funded research project for the Center for Rural Pennsylvania analyzing how the digital divide impacts rural first responders in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Ali is the author or editor of four books: "Public Service Media’s Contribution to Society"(Nordicom, 2023, with Prof. Dr. Manuel Puppis), "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity" (MIT Press, 2021), "Media Localism: The Policies of Place" (University of Illinois Press, 2017), "Echoes of Gabriel Tarde: What we know better or different 100 years later" (USC Annenberg Press, 2014, with Drs. Elihu Katz and Joohan Kim).
Based on his expertise, Ali was called to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee in 2021 on broadband funding and policy programs. He has also briefed members of the House Democrats Task Force on Rural Broadband, the New York State Blue Ribbon Commission on Re-Imagining New York, the Federal Communications Commission, and has presented before numerous state and county governments.
Dr. Ali has published over two dozen peer reviewed articles in high-ranking academic journals including, The Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, Media Culture & Society, and Telecommunications Policy. His writing has also been published in Tech Policy Press, The New York Times, The Hill, Realtor Magazine, Law & Political Economy, Digital Beat, GovTech, Zocalo Public Square, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Washington Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, and The Conversation. He is a frequent press commentator on the subjects of broadband, media policy, and local news, with interviews in the Associated Press, Hollywood Reporter, Business Insider, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, NPR, CNET, CBC, Bloomberg, and other major national and international news outlets.
Ali presently serves as the Associate Editor of the journal Communication Law & Policy. He also sits on the advisory board of the Centre County Film Festival.
Previously, he served as the Chair of the Communication Law and Policy Division of the International Communication Association (2021-2023) and was an advisor to the Virginia Joint Committee on Technology & Science. He has also served on the Federal Communication Commission’s Communication Equity and Diversity Council Working Group and was a board member of Charlottesville Tomorrow, a non-profit news organization in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Dr. Ali has held fellowships or grants from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania (2025), the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society (2019-2020), the Global Future Council of the World Economic Forum (2018), the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communications (CARGC) at the University of Pennsylvania (2017 & 2022), the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University (2016-2017 & 2019-2021), the University of Fribourg in Fribourg Switzerland (2015), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2011).
Ali is an award-winning scholar, having been honored with the 2024 Bellisario Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award, the 2025 Dean’s Excellence Award for Research & Creative Accomplishment, and the 2025 Broadband Hero Award.
Vice President and Deputy Chief Counsel, U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Jennifer B. Dickey is vice president and deputy chief counsel at the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dickey handles a variety of litigation matters for the Chamber.
Dickey joined the Chamber following her service as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She also previously served as Deputy Associate Attorney General, providing strategic oversight of the Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, and Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, as well as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President. In the latter capacity, she provided legal advice on a wide array of executive actions and rulemakings, civil litigation, and judicial nominations.
Dickey also practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP before her government service. She was a commercial and appellate litigator, representing businesses in federal and state courts.
Earlier in her career, Dickey served as a law clerk for the Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Honorable William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Dickey earned her law degree magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, where she was an Executive Editor of the Duke Law Journal, and her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Dartmouth College.
Counsel, U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee
Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP
Dan leverages a deep understanding of telecommunications regulation and the broader legal landscape to help clients achieve their business goals. He provides practical and creative advice, develops persuasive policy advocacy, and represents clients in court appeals of agency matters. In an era in which courts play a larger role than ever in shaping regulation, Dan’s mix of legal depth, regulatory knowledge, and policymaking experience make him stand out.
His practice encompasses federal and state telecommunications regulation, emerging Internet issues, funding programs, online privacy frameworks, and consumer protection laws. He co-teaches a telecommunications law course at Georgetown Law School.
Prior to joining WBK, Dan spent eight years in leadership positions in the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau. There, Dan guided net neutrality and broadband infrastructure proceedings, implementation of caller ID authentication and the Robocall Mitigation Database, transaction reviews, and many other agency actions. He is especially proud of his contributions to establishing 988 as the three-digit code for the national suicide prevention hotline.
Today, courts make many of the most important decisions regarding agencies, and Dan regularly represents clients in court appeals concerning agency matters. He and the WBK team prevailed before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of industry associations in FCC v. Consumers’ Research, which affirmed the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund.
Dan is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Outside of work, Dan enjoys spending time with his kids, baking bread and cooking, playing card and board games, attempting to play sports, and science fiction/fantasy.
Executive Director, Consumers’ Research
Will Hild is the Executive Director of Consumers’ Research. Will has a decade of non-profit, legal and public policy experience. Prior to joining CR, Will served as the Deputy Director of the Regulatory Transparency Project. Before that, he worked at the Philanthropy Roundtable as the Director of External Affairs for the Culture of Freedom Initiative, and as the Chief Operating Officer of that Initiative when it grew to become a separate organization. He helped co-found the public interest law firm, Cause of Action, and served as the firm’s acting communications director for nearly a year.
Will received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida. He is licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Will resides in Bethesda, MD, with his wife Cheryl, a practicing OB/GYN, and their son Liam.
Partner, Fusion Law, PLLC
Paul is the founding partner of Fusion Law, PLLC. He has extensive experience with state, federal, and global regulators building coalitions and implementing policies to promote innovation in financial services. He is responsible for designing and implementing the first state (Arizona) and federal (CFPB) FinTech sandboxes in the United States. He also designed the CFPB no-action letter and trial disclosure policies. He helped found the first global regulatory innovation coalition (Global Financial Innovation Network) and led the founding of the first U.S. regulatory innovation coalition (American Consumer Financial Innovation Network). He served on the Financial Stability Oversight Council subcommittee on digital assets. He also has drafted state-level laws on blockchain and utility tokens.
Paul also has significant enforcement and litigation experience. He led many multi-state consumer protection enforcement matters as Civil Litigation Division Chief at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
Prior to his government service, Paul practiced law in the areas of securities litigation and transactional work for approximately six years at two well-known law firms. He also clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
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.
AI Innovation and Law Fellow, University of Texas School of Law
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow with University of Texas School of Law.
Executive Director, Engine
Kate has been at Engine since 2017 and has served as Engine’s Policy Director since 2019, working on privacy, intermediary liability, and telecommunications issues.
Prior to joining Engine, Kate worked on surveillance reform issues at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before joining the advocacy community, Kate spent years as a technology policy reporter in D.C., including at Politico, The Hill, and Communications Daily. She is a graduate of Hamilton College.
General Counsel, Center for Individual Rights
Darpana Sheth joined CIR as General Counsel in May 2025. She is a nationally recognized constitutional litigator with over two decades of experience serving in in leadership roles at other nonprofit organizations.
Before joining CIR, Darpana served for four years as Vice President of Litigation for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Prior to that, Darpana was a Senior Attorney with the Institute for Justice, where she also served as Director of the Institute’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse.
Before finding her calling as a public-interest attorney, Darpana served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York and worked in private practice as a litigation associate at the Manhattan law firm of Chadbourne & Parke, LLP. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Jerome A. Holmes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
A native of Philadelphia, Darpana graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. She earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Executive Director, Committee for Justice
Ashley Baker is Executive Director of the Committee for Justice and founder of the Alliance on Antitrust coalition. Her work focuses on antitrust law, technology regulation, administrative-agency authority, the Supreme Court, and judicial nominations. She closely follows the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, with particular attention to merger review, agency procedure, and the effects of regulation on American innovation and competitiveness. She is also founder of the Alliance on Antitrust Coalition.
Ashley has testified before the United States Senate on antitrust law. Her writing has appeared in Fox News, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Hill, RealClearPolitics, The American Spectator, and other national publications. She also provides policy analysis through congressional testimony and correspondence, regulatory comments, and public commentary.
Ashley serves on the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project and Antitrust and Consumer Protection Practice Group Executive Committee. She is also active in the Republican National Lawyers Association and has spoken on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. An authority on the judicial-confirmation process, she worked closely on the successful confirmation efforts for Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as multiple federal appellate judges.
Founder & Executive Director, World Privacy Forum
Pam Dixon is the founder and executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a respected public interest research group. An author and researcher, she has written influential studies in the area of identity, AI, health, and complex data ecosystems and their governance for more than 20 years. Dixon has worked extensively on privacy and governance across multiple jurisdictions, including the US, India, Africa, Asia, the EU, and additional jurisdictions. Dixon currently serves as the co-chair of the UN Statistics Data Governance and Legal Frameworks working group, and is an advisor to WHO’s Health Data Collaborative. At OECD, Dixon chairs the formal civil society multistakeholder work in OECD’s Artificial Intelligence Working Party. Dixon has presented her work on complex data ecosystems governance to the National Academies of Science, the Mongolian National Academies of Science, and to the Royal Academies of Science.
AI Innovation and Law Fellow, University of Texas School of Law
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow with University of Texas School of Law.
Senior Fellow, Technology Policy, Cato Institute
Jennifer’s research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology and law with a particular interest in the interactions between technology and the administrative state. Her work covers topics including judicial deference, liability protection for Internet platforms, autonomous vehicles and other disruptive transportation technologies, the regulation of data privacy, and the benefits of technology and innovation. Her work has appeared in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Sacramento Bee, the Washington Times, Real Clear Policy, and U.S. News and World Report. Jennifer has a JD from the University of Alabama School of Law and a BA in political science at Wellesley College.
Director, Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Ryan C. Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America and a course coordinator at the United States Foreign Service Institute. His research focuses on U.S.-Latin America relations, strategic competition and defense policy, authoritarian regimes, armed conflict and transnational organized crime, and trade and development issues. Previously, Dr. Berg was a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he helped lead its Latin America Studies Program, as well as visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Changing Character of War Programme. Dr. Berg was a Fulbright scholar in Brazil and is a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member. He has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed academic and policy-oriented journals, including The Lancet, Migration and Development, the SAIS Review of International Affairs, and the Georgetown Security Studies Review. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN.com, Los Angeles Times, and World Politics Review, among other outlets. He routinely testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Dr. Berg obtained a PhD and an MPhil in political science and an MSc in global governance and diplomacy from the University of Oxford, where he was a Senior Hulme Fellow. Earlier, he obtained a BA in government and theology from Georgetown University. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and is conversational in Slovenian.
CEO & Chairman of the Board, NeWay Capital and Próspera
Erick started his career in investment banking at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, before working as an M&A advisor for AG Edwards & Sons (now Wells Fargo). He then joined Ernst & Young’s London advisory practice. After that, he led the creation of multiple business units as CFO of LATAM at the Borealis Group, and as an entrepreneur in the financial services industry. Erick is a member of the Society for International Development, in Washington DC.
Executive Director, Center for a Secure Free Society
Joseph M. Humire is a national security expert, specialized in analyzing Transregional Threat Networks in the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Humire provides regular briefings on countering China, Russia, and Iran’s authoritarian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as combating the convergence of international terrorism and transnational organized crime. Mr. Humire has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress as well as the European and Canadian Parliament and in 2023 was awarded an Order of Defense Merit Medial from the Colombian Armed Forces.
Mr. Humire is a regular national security commentator and contributor for a variety of English and Spanish language media and has a regular weekly radio segment called the #NewWorldReport on the nationally syndicated show and podcast CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor and is the host of the Border Wars Podcast available on all digital platforms. Mr. Humire has published in both languages for various newspapers and academic journals across the Americas and released his first book in 2014 titled Iran’s Strategic Penetration of Latin America, published by Lexington Books. More recently, in 2019, he wrote the foreword for the latest book by Dr. Max G. Manwaring, titled Confronting the Evolving Global Security Landscape published by Praeger Security International.
Mr. Humire currently serves as the executive director of the national security think tank—Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS)—based in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Prior to SFS, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps with a combat tour in Iraq and a multinational training exercise UNITAS in Latin America and the Caribbean. After leaving the military, he graduated from George Mason University with a degree in Economics and Global Affairs. Mr. Humire began building SFS’s global network of more than 100 security scholars in almost 30 countries worldwide as the Director of Institute Relations at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. He is currently a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security and a visiting professor-of-practice at Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom.
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